


A Man of Letters, or Five Times Baz Retreats and the One Time He Doesn't

by palimpsessed



Category: Carry On Series - Rainbow Rowell, Simon Snow & Related Fandoms
Genre: 5+1 Things, Allusions to the Buggery Act, Alternate Universe - Regency, Baz is just Beau Brummel in this probably, Baz rhapsodizing about clothing, Brief mentions of war violence but there are not descriptions, Carry On Through The Ages, Epistolary, Homoerotic sword fights, I mean it's not mentioned because it's Regency England but this is a Simon Snow story so..., Implications of racism and queerphobia, Internalized Homophobia, Letters, Lingering glances across a crowded room, M/M, Mentions of the Mage, Night Terrors, Not an actual hanging, POV Alternating, POV First Person, POV Simon Snow, POV Tyrannus Basilton "Baz" Pitch, Panic Attacks, Period-typical attitudes on queerness and race, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Regency, Sensual hand holding, Slow Burn, What is Plot?, You're Welcome, brief mention of hanging, but he's already out of the picture by the time the story starts, cause you know, we stan a dandy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-05
Updated: 2020-12-11
Packaged: 2021-03-09 05:35:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 54,045
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27399583
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/palimpsessed/pseuds/palimpsessed
Summary: After the war with Napoleon, all Simon wants is peace and quiet in the country with his friend Penny, but night terrors and panic attacks weren't the only surprises awaiting him back home. Dowager Lady Salisbury saw news of Simon's exploits abroad and arrived on his doorstep with the shocking revelation that he was her grandson. At his grandmother's insistence, Simon accompanied his newfound family to London, overwrought by excitement at the chance to finally belong, and anxiety from the struggle to fit his new role.Baz is heir to two very wealthy and well-respected families in England, but that hasn't stopped tongues from wagging. Baz has always been more interested in fashion and philosophy than in helping his father run the estate, and he refuses to settle down. Despite his recent sterling showing at Oxford, Baz's father has begun to lose all patience with his recalcitrant son. Matters went from bad to worse when Baz's fiancé threw him over only days after their engagement became public, rekindling rumours the family hoped to quash. Against his father's wishes, Baz has trooped off to London for another season with his friends, but the looming death knell of his good name has soured his last act of rebellion.
Relationships: Tyrannus Basilton "Baz" Pitch/Simon Snow
Comments: 87
Kudos: 123
Collections: Carry On Through The Ages





	1. On The Ball

**Author's Note:**

> Welcome to my Regency Era AU for Carry On Through the Ages!
> 
> First, a huge thank you to [BazzyBelle](http://archiveofourown.org/users/bazzybelle) for organizing this event. She is one of the kindest and most supportive people I know so please give her all of your love and appreciation.
> 
> I was a big Jane Austen nerd in college, but it's been a while since I've tried my hand at writing in the period, so it was fun and also a little nerve-wracking dipping my toes again. This event was great motivation for me.
> 
> I will eventually illustrate something for the fic because the whole point of this exercise was the period costumes. I'll embed the art when that's done. <3
> 
> Thank you for reading! I hope you enjoy!

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In London for his first season, former Army Captain Simon Snow has plenty of reasons for sleepless nights, but none quite so distracting as the arrogant and gorgeous Basilton Grimm-Pitch.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Now with art! <3

_26 January, 1810_  
_4 St James's Street, London_

_Dear Penny,_

I know that you won't be surprised when I tell you that I do not like writing letters. Not at all, but especially, not to you. I don't want to write you letters. I want you here with me so that I can talk directly to you. See your face and hear your laugh. Watch you roll your eyes at me, which you're probably doing right now. I know I've barely been gone a week, but I already miss you something fierce and I wish more than anything that you had come with us.

No. I wish more than anything that I had stayed behind with you.

I wonder if Lady Ruth will think it's improper for me to write to you. A year ago, the only worry I had in the world was whether or not I was going to get bayoneted in my sleep, and now I'm wondering if my grandmother is going to cuff my ears for sending a letter.

(I don't think she's actually the type to cuff a man, even her grandson, especially if he's full grown and been through war. But as much as I truly like Lady Ruth, I'm quite terrified of her. Even if she will keep trying to feed me cake.)

I wonder what you're doing right now. I mean, not right, right now. Of course, you're reading this letter. (Which is awful, and I'm sorry.) (Maybe part of the reason I hate this so much is because I've not had need of letter writing since I got back and this just dredges up feelings and memories I'd rather have left buried in France.)

But none of that now. I don't want to think about that. I sat down to write you this letter to tell you that I miss you and that life is sad and empty when I don't have you around and it makes me melancholy.

You know me better than anyone. I've never been melancholy in my life.

I never told you this, but when I was younger, before I'd ever come to the attention of Mr Davy, I used to dream about my family coming to find me, bringing me home with them. We'd all live together, my parents and a few siblings and some dogs, in a big messy mob in some fine house somewhere and I'd have everything I could ever need.

And now here I am. No parents, but a grandmother, and an Uncle and Aunt, little cousins, small noisy dogs, a townhouse in London with a whole pack of servants that won't even let me wipe my own chin. Bank notes in my pocket. Nice clothes and a carriage at my disposal.

So, why am I so miserable?

I shouldn't tell you this, because I think you'll be ashamed of me, but we swore no secrets, and I will feel better if I get it out.

While we were at the ball last night, I kept looking at the door and thinking of what would happen if I walked out. Just walked right out and didn't look back. No mind for a destination. I just wanted to leave. I wanted to leave it all and pretend this never happened. That it was another one of my wild childhood fancies, and that anytime I liked, I could decide to stop it, and I'd be back home with you and your parents and all of your siblings. Where I had all I needed.

Good Lord, Penny.

Why didn't you try to talk me into staying?

If you weren't my only friend still alive, I should be quite cross with you for throwing me to the dogs. (I am grateful to Lady Ruth, of course, for wanting me. But I don't belong here.) (I don't want to belong here.)

Would you believe me if I told you that it wasn't my intention to write you a letterful of complaints? I began this with the notion of telling you about the ball, not my plans to escape from it.

I know that you find balls distasteful and frivolous, so I won't bore you with the details. Even if you wanted to hear them, I couldn't tell you what any of the women I danced with were wearing, or how they had styled their hair, or even what their names were. I did think it would be nice to make some more friends, but you can't hold a decent conversation during a dance, and I didn't really have anything to talk about. My partners were only interested in me for the gossip they'd heard. Apparently, the whole town's been whispering about me since the news broke that I was Lady Ruth's grandson.

To the people of the _ton_ , that's all I'll ever be.

To Mr Davy, I was...I'm not even sure what. An experiment? Certainly not a son.

But who am I, to me?

I'm not a soldier. I'll never be the great figure of a man Mr Davy groomed me for. I'm no hero, nor patriot. I'm no longer a beggar, but I'll never be anything better.

Maybe a foundling like me never makes up the difference, no matter how many wars we fight, or families we find.

(You see? I told you being apart from you was making me melancholy.)

If I'm to be truly honest, then I suppose I'll have to admit that something happened last night that started me on this current train of thought. A circumstance which I've not been able to get out of my head. Maybe putting it down to paper will help rid me of it.

We'd been at the ball a little over an hour. The rooms were too hot and crowded and smoky, and I was miserable. I was trying to put on a good face for Lady Ruth and Lord and Lady Salisbury. I'd just managed to get myself free for a pair of dances, when I felt a hand grab my coat sleeve. I jumped. I was so on edge the whole evening, it's a miracle I didn't do worse. It was Lady Ruth, tugging on my sleeve. I bent closer to her and she whispered in my ear: "The young Mr Grimm-Pitch and his covey of followers."

As she spoke, I could actually feel the whole room hush. An alarum started to clang in my head at the suddenness of the change; it was the same sort of stillness that prefaced doom on the battlefield. That feeling of knowing that something is about to go very wrong, just before the fellow next to you takes a round in the head and goes down. If Lady Ruth hadn't been keeping her firm hold on my sleeve, I don't know what I would have done. I gritted my teeth and told myself that I wasn't at war, that I was safe, that we weren't under attack. I stared hard into Lady Ruth's eyes; they're a sort of leached out blue, like age has faded their vibrance. Her gaze was sharp like a spark and undaunted. I told myself that the smoke in the air was from candles and cigars and not gunpowder and fire. That the room was packed tight with bodies, but they were all alive and none of them meant me any harm. (Not the sort of harm that matters.)

She kept talking while all of this was rushing in my mind. I only caught snippets: "…family estate…broken engagement…had his limit…disinherit…"

I had no idea if she was still talking about the same man, or someone new, or more than one someone.

My mind slowly became aware of another change in the room, flowing along like the tide: all heads turning in the same direction.

At first I thought they were all turning to look at me, and that did not help my shattered nerves, but they weren't paying me any mind. I let out a gust of breath and then I turned, too, because there just wasn't anything else for it. I had to know what was happening. (This is why I prefer to take up position with my back firmly against a wall. I don't like surprises.)

The best I could tell, it was a large group of newcomers to the ball that was drawing the attention. They were all young, about my age, and oozing the stench of finery.

I counted seven gentlemen (for they were most definitely nothing less) and three ladies. The ladies walked arm-in-arm at the front, unescorted by a single one of their male companions. The one in the centre had a crown of soft golden hair atop her head, coroneted in tiny flowers, that shone like noontime sun under the chandelier as she walked. She was the prettiest thing I ever set eyes on, and she carried herself like she knew it, but her face was entirely open, her countenance friendly and full of some kind of joy as I've never known. Her friend to the right was tanner, slighter, shorter, and with a face dotted in freckles even more aggressive than my own. The lady on the left was darker than her friends, also freckled, but with bright, rosy cheeks and curly brown hair that bounced against her neck as she moved.

I couldn't feel farther from the battlefield if I was at the other side of the world.

As the ladies passed, I got a full view of the gentlemen. Or, rather, one gentleman. Once I'd caught sight of him, I couldn't look anywhere else.

He was in the centre of the group, and he looked for all the world like he was holding court. He was so starched and pressed, I'd never have believed he could even move in his tight trousers if I hadn't watched it happen. His collar was so precise, it was nothing shy of a miracle that he could still manage to turn his head. For being a figure so impeccably tailored, he kept his hair unfashionably long, down to his shoulders. Midnight black, shining like it was full of stars. His skin was a stark reddish gold colour and he had these droopy eyes and lips. Everything about him just looked spoilt and rich. He seemed a whole head taller than the men around him, even though I don't think he was. It was something in the way he carried himself, like his joints didn't bend, though his movements were graceful as a dancer.

While I stared, Lady Ruth carried on whispering. "Got himself a new heir last year, thanks to that young wife of his—God knows they've been trying hard enough. Now he doesn't have to pin all his hopes on our dandy."

I was totally lost by this point, but I was at least fairly certain that the dandy in question was the same man I, and maybe everyone else in the ballroom, was watching.

I'll say this for Lady Ruth: she won't be out-gossiped, no matter how much these society people will wag their tongues about us. From the moment we arrived, she had been giving me a running narration on everyone at the ball, I suppose in an effort to make sure I was informed. Or maybe because it amused her. I'm still getting accustomed to her sense of humour, which seems to be: the more ridiculous, the better.

"Mr Grimm-Pitch?" I asked Lady Ruth.

"Mr Grimm-Pitch is the son, Mr Grimm is the father."

That clarification only further confused me. "What?"

"It was a stipulation of the boy's mother's father. Was determined that his name would live on, though he only had daughters. So, Mr Grimm had to adopt his first wife's name with his, in order to secure anything in the marriage. Not that he needed the money, mind, but you know how these things go."

"I don't." I admitted.

At that, she stopped whispering and pulled back to look at me, something unreadable, but I think sincere in her eyes. "No, of course not."

She released my sleeve, turned me to face her straight on, and said, "whatever else comes of this trip, Simon, I didn't bring you here to try to change you. I want that least of all. I only want to know you, my boy. Don't let this world and these people taint you."

I wanted to laugh at that. I wasn't her boy; I wasn't anybody's boy. And I was far past tainting. But I didn't say this, because I didn't think she wanted to hear it. No matter what she claimed, Lady Ruth didn't want to know me, she wanted to know the idea of me that she had drawn up in her mind: a sweet young boy with her daughter's eyes who could bring back some memory of the child she had lost and make her feel charitable without actually having to breathe the dirt of my reality.

My life wasn't supposed to touch this world and these people.

As I was so eloquently reminded by Basil Grimm-Pitch. That's not even his full name. No, his full name is Tyrannus Basilton Grimm-Pitch, like his family was paying by the letter and they had something to prove.

(According the Lady Ruth, he got the Tyrannus and the Pitch from his mother. Suppose when you look at it from that perspective, I actually came out with the better break.)

No sooner had she finished telling me all about him than she marched me over to the group and introduced me without a moment's hesitation or preamble.

Well, no, she didn't introduce me to him, actually. She introduced me to the Golden Lady, Agatha Wellbelove. Lady Ruth is chummy with her family, it seems, and they spent several minutes catching each other up in that way high society people have of talking but never actually saying anything.

At the first lull, Lady Ruth introduced Miss Wellbelove to me. That's who I am now, apparently. The kind of man who has people introduced to me, and not the other way around. The kind of man who can ask for an introduction if he wants one. (I suppose there are exceptions to that, but it's hardly ever been true before.)

Miss Wellbelove was pleasant enough, but made no effort to mask the fact of her being completely indifferent to my existence. Strange though it may sound, her utter lack of attention made me feel excessively grateful to her. Every other woman I'd met took it as her due that as a young, unmarried man of newly discovered fortune and family, I should have hung on her every word and made love to her.

There was a time I would have liked that, I think. To be the dashing hero who sweeps into ballrooms commanding attention. But now that I've a fair chance at catching a lady's eye, it's the furthest wish from my mind. There's irony for you. Or whatever you call it.

Her two friends both looked as if they might be willing to entertain me, but hardly had need of waiting for my leisure, as they were both soon approached by a handful of hopefuls looking to stand up with them. Not a single one of them tried for Miss Wellbelove, though, she was easily the handsomest not just in her party, but in the entire ballroom. I didn't take her for impoverished, so I can't say exactly what it was that kept them away, except maybe a certain knowledge that she'd cut them for the temerity to make an attempt.

After the other ladies departed for the dance, my Uncle and Aunt joined us. Lady Salisbury and Miss Wellbelove are both keen horsewomen and fell into easy conversation.

What then transpired I think I can honestly say was the most peculiar experience of my life.

In the jostle of people, I ended up arm-to-arm with Mr Grimm-Pitch and received a sneer for the effort.

"Some of us have the good manners to mind personal boundaries," a smooth, deep voice complained as he turned around to look down his long nose at me (he's a bit taller than I am), ostentatiously dusting off his coat. Like he was afraid I'd brushed off on him.

Having no patience for that kind of remark, I replied, "More's the pity. Some of us haven't any manners at all."

"Ah, Simon. I see you've met Mr Grimm-Pitch." Lady Ruth sounded much too cheerful for the occasion. "Basilton, this is my grandson, Simon Salisbury."

It still sounded wrong, hearing that name. I spent twenty years being Simon Snow; I still feel like Simon Snow. I mean, I suppose I still am, but now I'm not just Simon Snow, I'm Simon Snow Salisbury, and the weight of that name sits heavily and sets me tipping off balance.

"Mr Grimm-Pitch is quite a good man to know about Town, Simon," she barrelled on as if we weren't both staring at her in shock.

"I'm not a good man for anyone to know," Mr Grimm-Pitch retorted and made an attempt to move off. He was prevented from making his escape, however, because Lady Ruth was in his way, and he couldn't very well shove her aside. She is somewhat hardy, so I reckon he could have done, if he was the sort of man who thought nothing of anyone save for himself. (He is precisely that sort of man.)

"Truer words!" One of his friends cried out from the pack behind him. A pale, weedy man, who looked more suited to taking ill to bed than strutting around a ballroom for a jape. "A very bad man, indeed, our sweet Basil."

One of Mr Grimm-Pitch's eyebrows shot clear up to his widow's peak. "Call me that again, and I shall prove you all too correct. Where is my groom? I shall ask him the use of his crop."

"Oh, shall you?" Another man jeered, jabbing an elbow to the side of the weedy troublemaker.

I had a feeling there was some joke the rest of us weren't meant to be in on, but Mr Grimm-Pitch didn't seem to think it was funny. "I swear to God, the next one of you who opens his mouth—"

"What'll you do with it—"

"I think that's enough," another man spoke. The voice was hard, and it carried an accent I wasn't familiar with.

The weedy man did stop. He didn't look like he was having fun anymore.

Mr Grimm-Pitch opened his mouth, I think to lay into him some more, when his friend with the accent, taller than all the others, and thinner, with dark brown skin, tightly curled black hair, and a wide smile, stepped forward and offered me his hand.

"It's a pleasure to make your acquaintance, Mr Salisbury," he said. "Shepard."

Shepard? I figured it had to be his name and not his occupation, seeing as there was no way an actual shepherd would have wangled an invitation to the Marchioness's ball. But I wasn't sure if it was his Christian name or his surname.

"I'd ask you to forgive Shepard his shameful lack of propriety," Mr Grimm-Pitch addressed himself to me again, or maybe to everyone, "but he's American, which is unforgivable. As for the rest of this mob? I don't imagine you place overmuch merit on manners, do you, Salisbury? Or do you still go by Snow?"

"Mr Salisbury is fine," I said, ignoring his slight. Or was it a compliment? He didn't use courtesies with any of his friends, but they were friends, and we decidedly weren't. "Or Captain Snow, if you'd rather."

"Oh, a captain, are we? How very impressive. My apologies, Captain." His American friend gave his arm a light touch with the back of his hand, as if cautioning him against speaking any further.

"Wouldn't expect a man like you to know," I smiled, all teeth. I was wearing my uniform, but he probably couldn't tell rank. "You've had more important matters to concern yourself with here in London."

He didn't seem to appreciate my response. He likely wasn't used to ever being challenged. But you know that I've never had the patience for spoilt prigs like him trying to bring me low to make themselves feel bigger. And I wasn't inclined to check my reflexes when he'd made absolutely no effort to seem friendly.

"I'd ask you to forgive Baz his arrogance," Shepard (Mr Shepard?) cut in, with a hard look at his friend and an arm around his neck, "but he's just an arsehole."

Lady Salisbury gasped at that. I guess she'd been paying a little attention to our conversation after all. "Oh, dear."

Her husband chuckled. "Come now, my dear, you should be more accustomed to vulgarities, given how much time you've spent in company of my mother."

Lady Ruth waved this off. "May it never be said I am afraid to speak my mind."

"I assure you, my Lady, no one ever shall," Mr Grimm-Pitch replied, nastily. But Lady Ruth gave him an appreciative laugh.

"My reputation precedes me, then," she declared, "and I'm relieved to know it's an accurate one at that. What is your much-afflicted father up to these days, Basilton?"

I was surprised to learn that Lady Ruth was apparently on a first (or I guess second) name basis with Mr Grimm-Pitch. With his rude friends and pointed commentary on my lack of breeding, it was pretty hard to imagine him as the sort of man who could be on good terms with someone as kind as Lady Ruth. But no matter what sort of tales she wove about him behind his back, I suppose he was important (rich) enough to demand her respect to his face.

No matter how much money, or how many names, he had, I could not see any merit in my knowing him. What benefit did Lady Ruth see in it? He had a tongue as sharp as his teeth, and they had both already done a fair job of tearing into me.

"Cursing my name, no doubt," Mr Grimm-Pitch answered with little regard for the charge he was laying on his own head. His friends all laughed. Well, all except for Mr Shepard. He looked a bit worried.

"Which name?" I asked, probably unwisely.

He blinked at me, as if he could not believe I had the nerve to ask.

His friends all found my question quite amusing, though, and he was forced to allow it to pass unchallenged.

Instead, he raised that eyebrow of his again. I was beginning to understand it was his favourite pastime. "You're rather a mouthful yourself these days, Captain Simon Snow Salisbury."

I distinctly heard one of the sniggering men from earlier mutter something about a mouthful, but I didn't think it was meant at my expense.

Mr Shepard dropped his arm and turned around. "Really?" He asked.

"Leave it," Mr Grimm-Pitch muttered under his breath. "They're harmless."

"Maybe _they_ are, but—"

"I don't care!" Mr Grimm-Pitch snapped at him.

By this point, they definitely had an audience.

Maybe they'd had an audience the whole time, I was only just then becoming aware of it. (I was having a hard time looking away from Mr Grimm-Pitch. He just didn't look real.) (I reckon if you stood him and Miss Wellbelove side-by-side, they'd look like something right out of one of those old paintings you're always going on about.)

For all his smart remarks, I got the feeling that Mr Grimm-Pitch did care. And then suddenly, it didn't matter what sort of a man he was like. Because I understood him. He was putting on his brave face and hard demeanour because inside, he was really and truly bothered by whatever it was people were saying about him behind his back. And I could relate to that.

I can't even tell you how strange it felt to look around that room and realise that of all the people there, including the only two blood relatives I have in the world, I had the most in common with Tyrannus Basilton Grimm-Pitch.

And then I thought about Lady Ruth, and how even she'd been gossiping. I know she wasn't doing it to be malicious; Lady Ruth has been at great pains to keep me informed about all the social goings on around me. She said she didn't want me to be caught unawares, or feel out of place. (As if that were avoidable.)

Maybe if I'd been paying her more heed, I wouldn't be so confused about what was going on around me. Maybe I'd know exactly what Mr Grimm-Pitch was so keen to let people think didn't matter when it very clearly did.

And I don't think that's right. If it's his business, then he should keep it. I don't want anyone beating out all the dust I've been sweeping under my rugs.

That's when I decided I'd be decent and shew him a bit of mercy.

"It's a bit shit, isn't it?"

If he and his were being vulgar, then so was I. Besides, I was talking quietly. I wanted to make him feel more comfortable, and soft voices always help me.

"What is?" He asked, narrowing his eyes. He looked suspicious, like he didn't really believe I was being sincere and was just waiting for me to poke him. I suppose with friends like his, it makes sense he'd expect that.

"Having all these people insert their noses into your private affairs."

Every single muscle in his body seemed to tense and a fire flared in his eyes.

"What...the _fuck_...do you know about my private affairs?"

I might have miscalculated.

"N-nothing."

I was stuttering. That's how disconcerted I was.

I couldn't remember any of my words. And the ones I could get hold of, they didn't want to come out of my mouth.

"I-I mean, I-I didn't. I don't. I just meant. I mean, I get it. Yeah?"

I felt so much relief in being able to actually get out a whole sentence that I started smiling, and I must have looked like a lunatic, because he started sneering at me again. Like I smelt bad, or something. (Maybe I actually did. It was very hot in that room, and I was probably sweating like a stuck pig by that point.)

"All the-the...you know. The talk. Gossip!" I almost shouted when the word finally came to me. He flinched. I could sense eyes on me, and I knew I was making a fool out of myself, but I couldn't stop. I don't know why I couldn't stop. All I could think was that Lady Ruth was going to be so ashamed of me and not bring me out in company anymore. And then she'd send me home because I can't handle polite society. (Because I don't actually belong here and nothing she nor anyone else says or does is going to change that.)

I tried to modulate my voice, but I'm afraid that just made it sound shaky. (Which it was.) (Because I was a mess and I could feel a fit coming on.)

"I know what it's like," I said, feeling very, very small indeed. And it wasn't even his fault this time. It was all mine.

He didn't say anything. I don't blame him. I wouldn't have known what to say to me, either.

I suppose it was actually a bit kind of him not to respond. He could have been scathing. I knew he was capable of it. But he just turned away and started talking to one of his friends who'd been laughing at him, and I was left to stand there and push out all the breath I had in me to try to keep myself standing.

The ride back to the townhouse, the whole night tossing in bed, this morning, it's all I've been able to think about.

I tried to apologise to Lady Ruth, but she waved me off. Acted like I hadn't done anything to apologise for. Acted like I hadn't made her look just as much a fool as I am.

I've not gone down for breakfast. I don't know the hours they keep here anyway. I just don't feel like I can face anyone.

Not that it matters. Much as I may try to avoid them, I can't avoid _him_. I can't explain it, but he's in my head. I can't shake him.

His intense grey eyes and sneering mouth will not leave my mind. For hours now, they've been haunting me like the scales of judgement, always finding me wanting.

Because that's what I am. Wanting. That's what I've always been. Wanting for what I don't have, what I can't have. Wanting for food, for shelter, for family.

Wanting for some blessed peace and quiet.

He's a plague on my mind, Penny. A stain I can't blot. I spent barely ten minutes with the man, but he's burned into me like a grease fire.

There is absolutely nothing redeemable in him, and yet, I feel determined to prove something to him. To shew him—to shew all of them—that I can't be dismissed, that I'm more than Lady Ruth's charity case, a bit of scandal and gossip, some name in the broadsheets about past exploits in the war. I want to be _real_. I want to matter. I want people to look at me and know that I'm worth something, all on my own.

I think. I think I just want to be seen.

I know it's useless. It doesn't matter how much money I have to my name, or even what name that is. ~~I can't be equal to the likes of him.~~

~~I can't be anything better than mud on his shiny boots.~~

~~I keep thinking~~

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Bonus! I wasn't sure if I was going to include this or not, so I just thought I'd plop it in here. Since it's already written and all.
> 
> Text of the letter Simon actually sent to Penny after he had a crisis over the other one:
> 
> _Happy Birthday, Pen. I wish I were there with you in person instead of writing this. I'll see you soon (sooner if you would accept the Salisburys' invitation to stay). (If you won't come for me, come for the museums.) Missing you something fierce._
> 
> _Yours, Simon_


	2. A Night at the Opera

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Out at the opera, Baz finds himself with a perfect view of the very (gorgeous) man he made a fool of at the Marchioness's ball and has no idea what to make of the development. So he decides that confronting Simon is the only reasonable thing to do.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Brief note on Dev and Niall: I've characterized them very differently to how most fanfic authors do. I don't really have a headcanon for their personalities, so I went where this chapter took me.

25 February, 1810

Dear Mother,

I know it was thoughtless and perhaps a bit ungrateful, but I burnt Father's last letter.

I've burnt all of his letters.

If he can't be bothered to come up to Town to summon me home himself, on my birthday, then he can keep his bloody estate for his new son. I've never wanted any part of that life, the country squire. I can't understand why he's so determined to make me into one.

It's not as if we've ever had a single thing in common. It's not as if he's ever made the effort for any other thing in my life.

If he wants me by his side, learning his wisdom, then perhaps he should have bothered to impart it to me in any of the preceding twenty-one years of my existence.

Apparently that's too much to ask of Malcolm Grimm. I long ago ceased asking anything of him.

Apologies, Mother. I know you were disgustingly in love with him, but I don't think you'd recognise the man he's become since we lost you.

I can't help wondering if you'd recognise _me_.

I'm feeling particularly maudlin this evening. Or, rather, morning. It's well after four.

I wish I could say it is with good reason I eschew sleep…but I don't think you'd believe me. The problem is that I am not avoiding sleep, it is avoiding me. I'm rather cross with it, to be frank. It's just like sleep to abandon me in my hour of need.

My thoughts have been a tempest I've no hope of taming.

Will you be disappointed in me when I tell you that I have seen _him_ again? Even though I swore him off after the ball? (And every day after.)

It would seem I might have been overly hasty in my denunciation of London's newest Golden Boy. His oafish bumblings at the Marchioness's did nothing to blunt the barb of his appeal. Simon Salisbury is the toast of every dinner party, the twinkle in every young maid's eye, the wish of every scheming mother's heart, the bane of every eligible bachelor's prospects.

In short, he is everything to everyone, his face haunts me at every turn, and his name falls from every tongue.

Though it is nearing the very height of the season, I was hardly put out at maintaining a lower profile than normal for the past month, waiting for this fuss to wane, for the shine to come off our dear Salisbury, as it inevitably does from every hot-blooded man. But to my horror, that hope glows dimmer each day that passes and he fumblingly charms his way into a new, unsuspecting heart.

Leave it to me to fall smitten with the only man in all of England who is completely morally unassailable.

This is all to say that despairing of ever being quite rid of the threat of encountering him in all of the best places—the only places I would ever dare to go—I went back on my word of never again having to see or speak to him for one night alone, so that I could grant myself the indulgence of a proper birthday celebration.

The Theatre Royal at Covent Garden has very recently reopened and I had it in mind to attend last evening.

I felt rather smug, secure in the knowledge that no matter how highly sought after was our handsome Salisbury, he would not, by any stretch of the imagination, have the slightest interest or inclination toward opera.

I don't know what your brand of humour was like, Mother, but if it was at all like my Aunt's, you will no doubt find much to amuse you when I confess that no sooner had I taken my seat in our box than I looked across the crowd, to see who was there to be seen, and my gaze feel immediately and unerringly onto a head full of glowing bronze curls spilling into a pair of sparkling blue eyes. I nearly choked on my own tongue.

And be damned to the opera. He was the only spectacle I was interested in watching. And what a spectacle he was.

I don't suppose he had much opportunity to haunt the occasional opera house in his impoverished youth or during his military career. I don't pretend to know what his life was like before it collided with my own in a ballroom overlooking Hyde Park, but I am quite certain it did not ever before bring him to a place filled with so much folly and opulence as one finds on a night out at the theatre.

I say I am quite certain, not because it has ever been my wont to speculate on the private business of complete strangers, but rather, based purely on the empirical evidence that thenceforth proceeded to unfold before me. Namely, that Salisbury spent the better part of the evening sitting forward in his chair, with his mouth hanging open, an obscene invitation to every weary fly that happened upon him. His eyes were nearly as wide as his gaping maw, taking in absolutely everything around him. Were he of a more scientific inclination, I should have suspected that at any moment, he would produce from some unseen pocket a journal in which to record his observations on the foreign creatures whose native habitat he had clumsily invaded without even knowing.

Salisbury fits the part of invader much better than he does that of observer or gentleman.

Of course, he already has the costume for it.

He wasn't wearing his red coat last night, though. I've not been able to determine if Salisbury is still in the Army, or if he's left all of his old life behind him. He was in red when we met, but I've not seen him in the uniform again since. And—entirely against my will—I have seen him since.

(If only the rest of the _ton_ would oblige me by swearing him off as I have.) (After his display at the ball, I was convinced they would.)

I doubt he's the one choosing his clothes. What mind would a man in his position have for fashion and tailoring?

I would place my money on the Dowager, because her son is obviously clueless, and her daughter-in-law is not simply hopeless, but also rather an unlikely choice.

Whoever has been working their magic on Salisbury should in fact be the person to whom I offer my eternal devotion. Alas, I am left to flounder under the burden of lusting after a man who is incapable of dressing himself.

The utter and unmitigated shame.

Salisbury wore a forest green wool frock coat that set off the golden highlights in his brown locks. This was accented with a green and aubergine striped silk waistcoat that was trimmed in white piping and felt much too daring a pattern for the man. (I don't care if he was a soldier; it takes a hardier man than him by half to choose a stripe like that.) His charcoal trousers were enticingly snug, but not so much to prove lethal. His cravat and points left much to be desired, though that likely reflected poorly on his ability to keep himself in order, rather than the ability of his valet. (Good God, maybe the man doesn't even have a valet!)

I spied the glint from a golden chain at his pocket, a tiny cross hanging from it. (Of course he's a good, God-fearing Christian who cannot even stop to check the time without being reminded of Christ's sacrifice for his sins.) (Not that _he_ 's ever committed a sin in his life.) (Apart from all the killing.) (Does murder count when it's ordained by a king?) (Does it matter if that king is mad?)

For my part, I had chosen a burgundy damask waistcoat, black velvet coat and trousers, and a black topper trimmed with blood red grosgrain. I will admit, it was fairly conservative by my standards, but I might have been slightly preoccupied with thoughts of red coats as I dressed. I've decided not to overthink it because I looked impeccable. And I definitely caught Salisbury staring at me more than once.

To my great shame, Welby caught me staring back. I don't know why I continue to tolerate my friends, given how poorly they all treat me. I hardly have the energy to even be tired of her constant betrayals. I didn't think she could stoop lower than propositioning me with a marriage of convenience to thwart her mother's social machinations with a baronet only to publicly throw me over the very next day.

To no one's surprise, I was wrong.

"You have to be nice to me," I insisted, once she got started.

"Why?" Welby asked, not even sounding like she was being purposely obtuse and difficult.

"Because it is my birthday."

"Hurrah for you. You're the not the bloody Prince, Basil. As much as you may build yourself up in your own mind, I see no reason why tonight should afford you any favours."

I tried not to let her see how annoyed I was. Though she was having fun quizzing me for ogling Salisbury, she had no idea that I actually wanted him. And if she did, she didn't know how _badly_ I wanted him. (To do very bad things with.)

Showing my hand would only have given her an advantage that I had no doubt she would exploit fully for her own entertainment. I also did not trust her friends. (I continue to maintain that anyone called Minty is untrustworthy. That is not and has never been a real human name.) It is the utter tragedy of my life that Welby and I can't just sit together without her having to bring along an entourage of chaperones. (With everything said about me, you would think it were obvious I'm not interested in stealing her virtue.)

"Fine, then. You need to be kind to me because I have a fragile ego and the next time you want to use me as a pawn in your depressing marriage market chess match with your mother, I won't let you drag me into it."

"I proposed to you for your benefit as much as my own," she argued.

"And did you also break up with me for my benefit?"

"I don't understand why you're still upset about it. You didn't actually want to marry me, did you?"

"Absolutely not. You're the one with the mad scheme. But I would at least have appreciated a consultation of my feelings before you made an utter fool of me."

"Please. You adore being the centre of attention."

"I do not adore it when that attention entails nasty rumours about the bent of my inclinations flying decidedly in the faces of both God and Nature."

She offered me an ungenerous smirk and tapped a finger to my cheek in such a condescending manner I was sorely tempted to bat her away.

"My dearest Basil, don't tell me you've been misbehaving."

"Oh, piss off," I grumbled. "I'm practically a saint."

She laughed. "I look forward to hearing the Pope's thoughts on the matter of your sainthood."

"I've never heard that term for it before," I muttered.

That remark earned me a firm swat to the back of my head with her fan. "Be honest, Basil. You're not upset with me, you just don't want to face your father's displeasure."

"Was that not the entire purpose of the arrangement? We were supposed to be allies; those were your words, not mine. But that only works if we actually carry out the plan. And I would much rather go along with a sham marriage to you than deal with Malcolm Grimm."

"I'm going to pretend that you didn't just imply my company is only slightly preferable to being neglected by your father."

"Tell yourself whatever you need to hear to sleep at night."

"And what do you tell yourself?"

I know the question was rhetorical, but that hasn't prevented me from constantly turning it over in my head all night. Unfortunately, I happened to be looking up at Salisbury when she asked it. It brought me back to that night, after the ball, lying in bed for interminable, sleepless hours, wondering why I could not cease flaying myself for my behaviour toward the man, when I had no reason to care what was his opinion of me. No reason to feel sorry. Except for the one reason I would not allow myself to acknowledge, that he seemed a genuinely decent man who had been terribly out of his depth and yet had still tried to shew me kindness when I had only shewn him coldness.

(All right. Two reasons. The second being that he was also a terribly handsome man with shoulders like a fucking demigod, which is entirely beside the point.)

I suppose what I'm trying to say is that I think the answer to Welby's question is that I lie. I lie wholeheartedly and fervently and unreservedly. Because telling even myself the truth in the privacy of my own bedroom has always felt too dangerous.

You are the only person I can confide in, the only one I can trust not to turn against me in the inevitable moment I cut you on my thorns, the only one I know won't expose me in terms far more concrete than idle society whispers. (I wonder if a buggery charge would be dire enough to garner Father's actual presence at my hanging.)

What does it say about me that the only person I feel safe placing my faith in is my dead Mother?

Don't answer that.

The truth is that the moment I looked down into those blue eyes, I knew I was snared. And no matter how desperately I've been struggling against my bonds since that night, I have to accept the fact that I've been caught. That there is no escape from this. I might have spent years trying to run from it, trying to hide from the horses and hounds, but, with one look at Salisbury, I am cornered in a cage of my own making.

The truth is, I don't know if I want to escape.

I've always been weak for a hero. Not that I put any stock into his being a military man. I've never succumbed to the allure of the red coat as have so many of my countrywomen. But Salisbury is exactly the sort of dashing spark you'd find in one of those horrid Gothic romances Aunt Fiona used to eviscerate. A poor, nameless bastard who goes off to make his fortune, lands himself in glory through feats of daring, but remains humble, only to be discovered the long lost grandson of an earl who was spirited away from the familial bosom by a falsely pious man of the Church. (Good God, when I write it out, it's comical.)

It's quite easy to picture him charging into danger at precisely the moment the guileless heroine faints away in the arms of some maniacal villain. In this particular scenario, I'm not exactly sure which part I would be playing. The only character I have nefarious designs upon is him.

I counted myself fortunate that Welby had at least kept her wry observations low enough that the others hadn't picked up on the bent of her witticisms and joined in. The last thing I needed was them all starting in on me.

If Shepard had come along, I would have had at least one defender, but he was giving a lecture somewhere and I had felt too generous to try to guilt him out of it. It's my own fault for befriending a politically-minded American in a coffeehouse, but in my defence, one doesn't exactly decide to befriend a man like Shepard. He just insinuates himself into your life until it feels like he's always been there and you can't get rid of him.

(I suppose he is rather likeable, in spite of his…intensity.)

Dev and Niall, though, were absolutely not my fault, and I will stubbornly continue to hold you and father responsible for saddling me with the half-wits for life. They think they're so smug, with their bawdy jokes and innuendo. As if they're in on some secret that the rest of London isn't also privy to. Or maybe it's because they know it's true. (Most of it, at least.)

Do they expect me to laugh along at my own shame? Or to thank them for their generosity at being only vaguely indiscreet?

Or do they actually think they're witty? That would be the worst of all.

Possessed of a charitable spirit, and a reluctance to continue staring at Salisbury and wondering how his skin would taste, I went down to the saloon with them.

The two had been raising a card game to fill time before the pantomime with some of the men in the box over, and I was inclined to get away from both Salisbury and Wellbelove. I was paying no mind to the actual opera, besides.

We had just descended the stairs and Dev immediately made for drinks. I rolled my eyes at Niall, because I had not followed them down just to watch them get drunk.

We were still waiting for the other players when a commotion on the stairs at the far side drew my attention away from whatever was pouring from Niall's mouth and my eyes were once more assaulted by the unfairly attractive Salisbury. I was a little surprised to find him alone, because I had only ever seen him with his grandmother on his arm. He must have left her behind in the box with his uncle and aunt.

He looked to be in some distress.

His face was mottled red and coated in a sheen of sweat. His eyes darted about, and I wondered what he was looking for in such urgency. His gaze passed over me several times as if I were nothing more than a dust mote.

I tried not to take that to heart. He looked clearly out of sorts, and it's not as if he had to remember me after only a few minutes of hostile banter in a ballroom a month ago. I had not acknowledged him whenever misfortune brought our paths together again. Not until tonight, and only then because he had no doubt sensed my hungry gaze and looked over at me. And despite the fact that I had been quite caught in watching him, I hadn't looked away. I had just continued to stare at him, until his discomfort in the confrontation caused him to turn away again.

I had taken it from the look on his face those few times that he had not forgotten me. That I had made an impression on him, no matter how poor said impression had been.

But as he scanned the room, I began to wonder if it had only been the fact of my staring that kept drawing his eyes back to me in the theatre.

I was rather tempted to approach him and offer him a reminder (as disastrous as that would have proved on so many fronts) of who I was, but then he turned and disappeared. I frowned after him, drawn to follow, to see what had him so worked up.

Someone shoved my arm and I looked over to see Niall giving me a concerned expression. "All right?"

"Give me a moment?" I asked, trying not to betray my intention by the pitch of my voice or the look on my face.

(There is one thing I have learnt from Malcolm Grimm: how never to express emotion.)

"For what? Dev's got us a table."

Dev had indeed secured a table and was watching us with confusion and impatience.

"I just need a minute alone, is that so much to ask?" I snapped, with rather less petty annoyance and more vehemence than I should. (I can admit that perhaps I am not always successful in checking my emotions.)

"Are you on the hunt?"

"What?"

"You know. Are you..." he trailed off, widening his eyes and looking significantly at me.

"Christ, what is wrong with you? No, Niall. I'm not making my excuses to engage in some sort of horizontal conquest with a complete stranger in the middle of the fucking Theatre Royal."

"We are in Covent Garden."

"That's not—" I let out a hard breath. "If you do not stop speaking now, I will never speak to you again."

"It was an innocent question."

"No, it wasn't."

I left him then, not waiting to hear his response. I think he thought he was being supportive.

The part that galled the most, however, is that he was not as far from the mark as I would have wished.

I was absolutely not dashing off to follow Salisbury and offer myself up as a soothing balm to all his aches. (Well, probably I wouldn't have done, even if I'd thought there were the slightest chance the invitation would have been accepted.)

But I was dashing off in his general direction with the vain hope of possibly, accidentally, discovering him in a state conducive to humouring me in my present mood.

I would not prostrate myself. I wasn't out to befriend him. I just wanted to give him a gentle reminder that I existed. And that I wanted nothing whatsoever to do with him.

I still cannot say whether it was good or bad luck (bad, definitely very, very bad) that as soon as I rounded the corner behind the staircase I found myself colliding with him again.

This was much more than a passing, awkward bump of elbows. I was so surprised that I nearly went tumbling over onto my arse. Salisbury is shorter than me by a few inches, but much broader, and if the state of the veins on the backs of his hands, and the calluses on his fingers are anything to go by, he's much stronger. I had ample occasion to notice the state of his hands when they reached out and grabbed hold of me by my coat sleeves, catching me before I could pitch over.

"Mr Grimm-Pitch!" He cried, his eyes wide and his face full of horror.

I think I would have preferred for him to have forgotten me completely than to have inspired that kind of recognition.

I shoved him off of me, and the look on his face changed. "Right, sorry. Didn't mean to get my grimy hands all over your pretty coat."

I sighed. There was no way I was ever going to be able to have a pleasant conversation with this man, was there?

"It was my fault," I said. "I beg your pardon."

He looked up at me in shock. "A-all...riiight," he drew the word out, like he was afraid I was trying to entrap him with basic kindness.

"Captain Snow," I nodded at him, not sure how to proceed now. "I didn't realise you were a fan of opera."

"I get it. You don't have to keep harping on it. All right? If you'd just let me pass—"

He made as if to try to manoeuvre around me, but he didn't have room in the hallway without bumping into me again, and it's not like I was going to be merciful and shift out of his way. "Don't have to keep harping on what?" I asked.

He growled at me. Actually growled.

I wish I could tell you that the sound, coupled with his dreadful manners, quickly rid me of all finer feelings towards him and that I was cured of my affliction on that very spot. Sadly, it was something rather the opposite. I clenched my fists and my jaw as tightly as I could manage to try to regain some control over my pathetic composure.

"Look. I already know perfectly well what you think of me, Mr Grimm-Pitch, and—"

"I really do wish you would stop using my full name," I cut in.

He sagged a bit and as sad as I was to see some of the fire in his eyes quell, it was probably safer for both of us. "What?"

"I'd rather you call me Basil or Basilton. Or if you insist on remaining formal, Mr Pitch will do."

"Oh." He took a moment longer to process this information, then offered. "You can call me Simon."

I was absolutely never going to do that.

"I thought you preferred Captain Snow."

"I-I'm not sure how long I'll be keeping the Captain."

I balked. "I've read about your exploits. I don't think the Army is going to take back your commission. I'm aware most men of your...provenance never make it half as far."

He let out a hard breath. I could feel it hit against my chin. (Why we were standing so close? I wondered. And how did I get closer?)

"Well, some of us have to find a way to get a wage without draughts on daddy's bank."

"I'll have you know that most of my fortune is from my mother." I'm not sure if he understood or appreciated my kind of humour, but if he was going to be offput by a bit of sarcasm now and then, I suppose it were better I found that out sooner. All the easier to dispell whatever magic he had cast over me. "And you're the grandson of an earl."

"Yeah, illegitimate, a'n't I? Doesn't count for much if I've no claim of it."

"But you do now. Or hasn't Dame Salisbury taken you into the family bosom and shushed up all the nasty talk about the circumstances of your birth?"

In answer to my earlier question, I suddenly was much, much closer to Salisbury. With another growl, he had gripped me by my lapels and dragged me up onto my toes, jutting his chin right up in my face. If I had ducked a bit, I could have kissed him. (I didn't.) (But I could have.)

He was a good deal stronger than I'd anticipated, seeing as I was very barely still touching the floor.

"I don't know what you think you know about me, _Mr Pitch_ , but I didn't make Captain for being a good person. And I swear to you, if you ever speak ill of my mother again, I will shew you how."

I must confess that I am clearly a good deal more disturbed than even I had previously believed, because in the moment, all I wanted was to go limp in his arms and let him shew me. I wanted to let him make good on all his threats.

I console myself that I do still possess a thread of my former dignity, because I resisted the urge. Instead, I indulged myself in looking deeply into those blue, blue eyes of his.

Salisbury was especially luscious at that distance. His golden, freckled skin was still blotchy and sweat-slicked and it made me think of other, more agreeable situations we could find ourselves in that would render him thus flushed and flustered. His hot breath passed over my face and I could nearly taste it on my tongue.

When he swallowed, I chased his Adam's apple hungrily with my eyes as it bobbed against the top of his collar. I imagined sinking my teeth into it and I'm half-afraid I might have visibly shuddered, though I've no reason to believe Salisbury noticed. He was far too preoccupied in being a brute.

"You're right," I squeaked out pathetically. His narrowed eyes began to soften. "That was terribly rude of me. I would feel the same if anyone spoke poorly of my mother."

(I do not relate this part here to attempt to earn any favour from you, Mother. If I actually thought you would ever see this, I think it is safe to say, I would never have written any of it.)

Something twitched across his face and then he let me go with such force and speed, I almost went toppling over again. I was at least able to gather myself quickly enough to avoid actually falling.

"S-" he started. "I'm—sorry." He was gulping in air like a fish.

His face was even redder now, his cheeks darkening in shame or embarrassment or both.

"I shouldn't—I'm-I'm sorry. I—"

I smoothed down my coat, though he had popped a number of the stitches and there was nothing that could be done about them until I got home.

Salisbury was worrying his bottom lip and his curls, and I was of a mind to ask whether he needed assistance with either. But I didn't, because I was still trying to recover from the mauling.

"If you're quite done threatening my life, Captain, I suppose I had best return to my friends."

I don't think he heard me. His gaze held a kind of distance as told me he was likely not seeing the room about him. It was similar to the vacancy I had seen in them before, when he had just emerged from the theatre.

I wanted to ask if he was unwell, but I didn't think he would have answered me, even if he was listening, which he obviously wasn't. And it wasn't any of my business. Salisbury and I aren't friends, and we're not going to be. No matter how many times we wind up stumbling into each other.

I decided the best course of action was to leave him alone. To my dismay, however, I found that I was now the one hemmed in by the Captain, my back nearly against the wall, no bloody idea how I had managed to become trapped.

"Do you mind?" I asked, sounding much more petulant than was necessarily wise, considering how poorly he was wont to react.

He simply continued to ignore me, breathing heavily. He dropped a hand to lean on the wall next to me, and now I was truly cornered.

"Salisbury," I said. "Snow!"

His head snapped up and his eyes latched onto mine with a fervour I found astonishing.

His look riveted me in place, rendered me utterly dumbfounded. We just stood there staring at each other in physically uncomfortable silence. I don't know how long it lasted. Something passed in the space between us. Something tense and heady.

I swallowed. I think I was leaning in. I don't know. I had lost all agency over my body. But I could feel the warmth from his, and there was a lot of it because he was obviously overheated. I was vaguely aware of feeling painfully cold and very, very thirsty.

Salisbury is gorgeous. That was apparent from the moment I saw him. But there's more to him, under the surface. A vulnerability and a fierceness that I want to know more about. I want to get under his skin.

I already know his tragic story. The heartbreaking drama of a doomed romance and the heartwarming tale of redemption and reunion that brought him here, within my reach.

But I want to know _him_.

Who is Simon Snow Salisbury beneath the striped waistcoat?

(I know how that sounds, but I actually didn't mean it that way this time.)

"Bas-Basilton. Mr Pitch. I—"

He straightened up and moved away from me. "Sorry."

"All right there, Snow?"

He nodded, though it was obvious he wasn't all right. "Y-yeah. I—yeah."

Although I was tempted to ask him where he'd gone, yet I knew that he wouldn't answer.

"Where are your friends?" He asked me instead, taking me aback.

"Gambling away their fortunes."

He frowned.

"I'm hyperbolising. I don't think either one of them would actually be that thoughtless."

"Oh. Right."

He continued to look troubled.

"Problem?"

"What? No. No, I just. I don't understand."

"Don't understand what?"

He screwed up his mouth.

"Come on, then, Snow. You're not allowed to make leading comments and not be prepared to expand on them."

He started to sputter at me. "Well. Y-your—your friends. They just don't seem very nice."

"None of us are nice. And I don't see why you should care."

"You're going to stand there and tell me that you don't mind being abused in public?"

"Do you?"

"What? What kind of a question is that? Of course I mind."

"Then why are you talking to me?"

I should have kept my mouth shut. I don't know why I was suddenly determined to drive him away from me (some misguided lingering sense of self-preservation, perhaps?), but that's certainly how it sounded. And it was true. I'd been awful to him. Tried to make a fool of him on his first public outing. And then he'd tried to be kind and I'd struck out at him like a viper.

He opened and closed his mouth several times, never managing to make words come out.

"Dev and Niall may not be up to your standard of good, but they're mine. I've known them my whole life. They'll stick by me when everyone else runs."

This seemed to trouble him. "Maybe you just need to be a bit kinder, then, and not drive people away."

"I'm plenty kind."

"You're not."

"I'm kind when it matters."

Fuck me.

The cover slammed shut over Salisbury's face and he took a full step back. "Right."

I was on the verge of trying to salvage something between us, when we were interrupted.

"Simon?" His grandmother's voice was unmistakable as she called out to him.

"Simon?" She called for him again, louder and closer. I turned to see Dame Salisbury on her way toward us.

Taking matters (and coat sleeves) into my own hands, I forcefully moved him out of my path and spared a single, "My Lady," as I passed.

And then I left.

Which was a bit cowardly, and rather more than a bit selfish, considering that I had driven everyone to the theatre, and I was leaving them to fend for themselves until my carriage could make it back, without me in it.

But my seams were ruined, and so was the rest of me.

I wanted to crawl back to my room and wallow in my own shame, but apparently, even so much as that was too much to ask, for after I had achieved my apartments, I heard the distinct sound of glass clinking.

With a roll of my eyes heavenward (as though were anyone actually up there, they would ever spare a thought for the likes of one such as me) I shuffled wearily in the direction of the parlour.

Shepard was there, his coat thrown carelessly on the back of his chair, one leg thrown carelessly over the arm, and his collar and the top of his shirt undone. He was swirling something around in a glass. I couldn't tell what it was beyond some kind of liquor. You know that I detest the smell of the stuff, but I keep it on hand because people will keep drinking it. Shepard isn't usually one to partake, but last night he looked to be in a similar state to myself. That is, absolutely wretched.

"I see you've had about as much luck as I have," he opined, toasting me.

I grumbled something unintelligible, because I didn't have an intelligible answer, and collapsed gracelessly into the chair opposite. It's not as if he needed confirmation. One look at my attire would tell him all he needed to know.

"Wouldn't you know but people in this town don't like to be lectured on the inherent faults of their entire economic and class system?"

I let out a gasp, putting a hand to my chest, and drawing back in horror. "Slander."

He chuckled.

"Well, if they were going to be bastards about it, why did they invite you?"

"They knew me by reputation. Everyone thinks it's a great lark to ask the mad American. Until I open my mouth."

"Mm. Yes, people do take it rather personally when you tell them that they're wrong."

"I could have used you there."

"I'm no use to anyone."

"I won't argue that," he laughed.

I had finished unwrapping my cravat and tossed it in his direction, but it was far too long to do anything beyond fluttering out and falling. "Then why did you want me there?"

"Because you're my friend."

I scoffed.

"Also because you're a part of the system I was railing against and your names carry a lot of weight with that kind of crowd."

"My names, yes. Me? No. They'd be less inclined to take my word than yours."

"Are you sure about that?"

"Mm," I said, for the second time.

"All right, so let's hear it. I've never known the great Basilton Pitch at a loss for words." His brow knitted, and he sat forward, his look growing dark. "Hey, you didn't get into some kind of trouble, did you? Because I don't know the first thing about pistols, but—"

I rolled my eyes. "Thank you for being so ready to fight for my honour like the simpering damsel in distress that I am."

"Baz—"

I held up a hand. "Don't be so dramatic. It's only a good look on me."

"Well you look like you've been set on and trounced."

"Ah, yes. I had a bit of an impromptu reunion with our young Captain Snow."

Shepard's eyebrows shot up. "When you say reunion—"

"I mean the man nearly picked me cleanly off the floor by my collar." I frowned down at my much abused coat in misery. "It will never be the same. If there's any saving it."

Shepard sighed, setting down his glass and rubbing at his eyes behind his spectacles. "What did you do?"

"Why do you automatically assume it was my fault? Aren't you _my_ friend? I didn't accuse you of running yourself out of your own lecture, did I?"

"You know perfectly well why no one wanted to listen to what I had to say."

"Am I going to have to defend _your_ honour?" I asked.

"I mean this with the utmost affection, Baz; you'd be the last man I asked."

"You wound me."

He chuckled. "I'm more afraid you'd end up wounding _me_. Or running off."

"I never deserve such censure."

"You ran away from Oxford, didn't you? And your father? And…presumably all of your friends at the theatre tonight?"

"Oh-ho. Look who's earning his reputation as a great man of words."

"You didn't befriend me for my flattery."

"I didn't befriend you. You foisted your friendship upon me."

"I know you, Baz. I know you, because I'm a runner, too. And I looked at you and saw someone that I thought might be able to understand what it feels like to be on the outside, no matter what family you were born into."

"That is a bit too much truth for the night we're both having. I think we should admit defeat and go to bed."

He pointed a finger. "Ha! See? You're running away again."

"Yes, because it's apparently what I'm best at."

I at least had the decency to stop at the door and ask, "are you all right? Really?"

"Really." The look on his face told me he meant it. Which was good, because he was correct and I would most certainly have been completely useless to actually helping. "Go to bed, or I'll start to think you care about someone other than yourself."

"Heaven forbid," I said, imbuing my voice with a lightness I didn't feel.

The walk to my bedroom was like walking in slippery sand against the tide.

Salisbury had barely touched me, but I felt raw. Shepard was too keen, though I think it's what makes me love and hate him in equal measure.

I kept hearing his words turn over in my head. Welby's, too. I owe them too much. They ground me; they keep me from indulging in my absolute worst tendencies, of which, I'm sure you've been able to glean, I have many.

And I've been sitting up ever since, contemplating, sorely tempted to run again.

But where would I run? And who would I be running from? Salisbury? Shepard? Wellbelove?

Myself?

Unfortunately, I can't ever get away from the latter. And I think that's been the problem all along.


	3. Dinner is Served

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Wellbeloves host a dinner party, where Simon is not at all surprised, but still a bit peeved, to see Baz again.

_15 March, 1810_  
_4 St. James's Street, London_

_Dear Penny,_

As I start this letter, I already know I'm not going to post it. I know I won't be able to bring myself to do it, because of what I have to say to you. I do feel bad. It's not that I don't want to tell you. And you know I'm so much better at writing things down than saying them out loud. It's only that I feel like this would all sound better coming from me in person. I just don't think I'll be able to make you understand in a letter. I'm still trying to understand myself. And writing all of this down helps me with that. Even if I'm only pretending to write to you, it makes me feel better, to think of you on the other end. I promise I really will tell you everything as soon as we're together again.

You remember Miss Wellbelove from the Marchioness's ball? Well, I mean, I know _you_ don't, but the you I wrote to after the ball. The one I'm writing now. Anyway, it doesn't matter. What matters is that Miss Wellbelove and Lady Salisbury are pretty friendly, on account of they like to ride in the park, and Lady Ruth and Mrs Wellbelove play cards and things.

So, since we've been in Town a bit, they've been paying calls, and the Wellbeloves invited us over to theirs to dine. And can I tell you I was so nervous I was convinced I wouldn't even be able to hold a fork—let alone the correct fork—because my hands were sweating so much and I feared it would just slip off my fingers?

I do like Miss Wellbelove. I've not had much chance of talking with her, but she's always been pleasant and doesn't chatter at me. Which is nice; she's sort of peaceful. There is just so much fuss and noise in this city. I appreciate the people who don't overwhelm.

I did tell you—the real you—about having to run out of the box at the theatre because someone had been about to shoot a gun onstage and I felt like I couldn't breathe. It's things like that, things I don't look for, that are the hardest. I can't explain it. If I know what's coming, I can brace for it, and it's not so bad, even if the thing is bad.

That doesn't make sense. But in my head it does. Or it doesn't, but that's the way it _feels_.

I think it's that I've been letting down my guard. I don't mean to. I don't think I trust anyone here enough to do that. Everything in this place is so foreign. I don't feel safe here, but it's so different I can't defend against it, because I don't know what to expect.

I've been thinking a lot about Mr Davy. Wondering what he'd make of the man I am now. I don't think he'd be proud of me; I don't think he'd know me. I never knew him.

You'll probably be cross with me. I've been wearing his watch. I'm not doing it to honour him. I don't know how I feel about him; I probably never will know how to feel. But I like having the reminder. Not of him, really, but more of what it all led to. How someone can seem so good and kind and caring, but underneath they're a snake who's taken your whole future from you and hasn't even the decency to tell you any of it.

I look at the cross on the chain, and I wonder. I wonder how a person can do what he did and still think he's the one in the right. I wonder what I ever was to him. I wonder when he figured out who I was after he found me, or if he knew the whole time.

I think of all the things I said to him before I left. Or, all the things I didn't say, because I couldn't find a way to get them out. And I wonder if it was better that I didn't say them. Not for him, but for me. Does it make my conscience clearer? Or do those thoughts stay and fester if I don't let them out?

I know the real you would have a lot of opinions. It's part of what I love most about you. You always know what you think. You always have an answer. I never have answers. I don't even have the questions most of the time.

I've a lot of questions tonight, though.

Foremost of them: _What am I thinking?_

Followed closely by: _Am I mad?_

The evening started out fine. The Wellbeloves are all friendly. Dr Wellbelove is a physician and a magistrate, which makes him one of few men in the Salisburys' intimate circle who actually works for a wage. (I've met plenty of other officers, of course, but they all purchased their commissions, so I don't really think they count.) His wife is a bit of a snob, but Lady Ruth likes her well enough to beat her at cards once a week. The late Lord Salisbury, my grandfather, was close with Dr Wellbelove's father from University, and their family estates are in the same county. Dr Wellbelove's older brother keeps the estate, though, and Dr Wellbelove, being the younger son, lives and works in Town.

He's a bit of a name in these parts, as Lady Ruth tells it. The most-trusted physician. I can't say as I know why, unless he's brilliant, though it's more likely that he and his wife are both from the right kind of families, and have enough money from her side to live quite well without his profession.

I know this, because Mrs Wellbelove mentioned it while we were all at table; she's been after her husband to leave his practice and retire somewhere to the country to live like a gentleman of leisure.

"After Agatha marries," she added.

Her daughter rolled her eyes, though Mrs Wellbelove didn't see. Which was probably a good thing. I definitely got the feeling that it was not the first time Miss Wellbelove had rolled her eyes at her mother.

As it turns out, Mr Pitch's broken engagement was to Miss Wellbelove. They had it all arranged between them on a Saturday, and she threw him over on Sunday. Lady Ruth thinks it was orchestrated to thwart some Sir Something who had it in mind to propose to Miss Wellbelove.

I can't claim to follow most of the scheming that goes on here, but I'd believe it of Mr Pitch.

This is where I confess he was also in attendance at the dinner. He and his friend Mr Shepard.

"I don't think that's fair to Agatha, dear," Dr Wellbelove said, "to place our future onto her shoulders."

"She is our only child, is that not exactly what we are meant to do?"

"She'll marry when she's ready. And I've no plans of retiring. I'm needed here, and I enjoy the work."

This time, it was Mrs Wellbelove who rolled her eyes.

"Agatha, are you quite certain you won't marry Mr Pitch?"

The Mr Pitch in question nearly spit up his soup. (I think I'd have given my commission to see that.) To her credit, Miss Wellbelove didn't react at all.

"It was a mistake," she said. "Mr Pitch is like a brother to me."

Mr Pitch's eyes got very wide. Mr Shepard was biting his lip ruthlessly, trying to keep from laughing aloud.

"I feel it would be too horrid to marry a man I love as though he were my own family."

Mr Pitch cleared his throat, doing his best to hide a smile.

I nearly did drop my fork then. I don't think I'd ever seen him smile before. There was a new kind of light in his eyes, turning them from dark grey to silver. He's always pouting and scowling and sneering. He looks entirely different when he smiles, and I wanted to see more of that.

He was more at ease, I think, with the Wellbeloves. They obviously all knew each other, but it was a little more than that. It was sort of like he wasn't trying to put on airs for other people. Was the attitude an affectation, or did he just feel less prickly not being in public?

There were other guests, of course, Miss Wellbelove's two companions from the ball and the opera, and another man called Sacha, who'd defected from France before Napoleon came to power. Lady Ruth had assured me before accepting the invitation that it would only be intimates of the family and I wouldn't need to concern myself about impressing anyone new.

I couldn't help feeling a bit ashamed when she told me that. Like she didn't have any faith in me to handle more. It's been a while since the opera, and she's not taken me any place new since then. I've been living in a confusing mix of relief and guilt seeing new cards come in and her mostly ignoring them, or asking Lord or Lady Salisbury to go in her place. She says it's because she's getting too old for the social graces and wants more time to spend in getting to know me. I'm afraid that she's only saying that to make me feel better.

I know she knows.

I know they all know.

You can't keep a secret like mine when you share a house with three adults, four children, and a whole staff.

The first night it happened, it got so bad, the dogs started going into fits, and then the littluns started in, and the whole house was woken up, everyone running about trying to set things to rights. It took a bit of scrambling, according to my uncle, to determine the cause of all the chaos.

Lady Ruth is the one who volunteered to take charge of me.

She just sat there, once I was awake, tears still streaming down my face, and my throat absolutely as wrecked as my bed, and didn't ask me any questions. She gave me a finger of whiskey and then a whole pot of very hot tea. Once she decided that it was safe to approach me, she reached out and brushed my sweaty hair off my forehead. I wasn't sure how that made me feel. It's weird. Being touched like that. Soft and I don't know. Kind of careful, I suppose. I can't say as to whether she did it because she was afraid I was going to lash out, or maybe run away.

"Anything you want to tell me, my boy?"

She still calls me that, only some of the time. I haven't figured out yet what triggers it, if anything does. Suppose she could simply be trying it out. Or perhaps she can sense that it sets my teeth a bit on edge and doesn't want to make it a habit. (Though, I doubt she would have found good reason to use it just then.)

I could only shake my head, keeping my mouth firmly shut.

What was there to share with her? What is there to share with anyone? How can I articulate what it is that I feel? When I'm asleep, it's not as if I know what I'm doing or saying, anywise. I only know that I wake in a panic with a deep sense of dread and almost never manage to fall back asleep. Were I at home, I'd go outside and walk and breathe the night air and listen to the quiet. I can't do that here. Even if I did want to venture out after dark where I don't know any of the landmarks or the people, I wouldn't get any quiet. I'm a bit afraid of coming upon someone else, and them trying to have a conversation with me, and me being so deep into a fit that I wouldn't know them, or they'd set me off again, and I'd do something bad.

Pen, I don't know what's wrong with me. I feel like I'm not safe to be around other people. But I don't think I can be on my own, either.

What options does that leave me?

I wish you were here. You're the only person that knows who doesn't look at me with pity in their eyes.

I cannot even imagine what a disaster it would be, if word spread that I've been screaming and thrashing in my sleep and waking the whole household like I've been possessed by some kind of vengeful demon. Or that maybe I _am_ a vengeful demon.

I wouldn't blame Lady Ruth for not wanting to bring me back out into public afterward.

After I was sure I'd bungled my introduction at the ball, she was quite determined not to let it affect me, and became even more dogged about making a good impression of me with her friends. (All of her friends, that is, except Mr Pitch.) When I tried to tell her it wouldn't do any good, and that I'd only embarrass her further, she told me that the best way to recover was to pretend like nothing had happened. To show the world I was undaunted by one small, unfortunate interaction.

I don't think it was small, but it was certainly unfortunate. Still, I listened to her. And she was right, for the most part. I had been able to move past that night and practically no one remembered, not so much as they let on.

( _I_ remembered.) (And I know _he_ remembered.)

After that night in my room, however, when she sat with me and offered me whiskey and tea and sympathy, and I could offer nothing in return, I didn't think there was any likelihood she would continue to insist I join her on her outings. But when I tried to beg off the following night, she wouldn't allow it. I thought she was mad. I actually said those words to her. I looked in Dowager Countess Salisbury's eyes and I said, "you're mad!"

She took my face in her hands, and I tried to allow it, for I got the feeling this was a rather important moment, and I should not push her away, even if I was starting to feel like I couldn't breathe again. "Simon, my boy, we've been over this before. I'll not allow you to remain here alone and wallow."

"I'm not wallowing," I argued. "I honestly don't think it will be good for anyone if I go with you."

I wanted to tell her I didn't think it would be _safe_ for anyone if I went, but it felt extreme. Not the sort of thing you can share with your grandmother, especially when you've only just met after not knowing the other existed for twenty years.

"I don't care about anyone else," was her answer. "I care about you. I have no real taste for most of these people, if you want the truth of it. You are my grandson, and I'm proud of you, and I want to make certain that everyone here knows that. There are a lot of very powerful people you've impressed all on your own merits, as it should be. But I can do this much for you, and so I will do my best."

I don't know that she had any real right to be proud of me. It's not like she's had any hand in my survival up until this point in my life. (I know that sounds unkind, but it is true. I could have used her generosity a lot earlier, and while I know it wasn't her fault that we were separated, it doesn't change the facts of the matter.)

I don't know that I had any right to _like_ knowing she was proud of me.

An ugly part of my mind kept telling me that it was only because I'd given her something to be proud of that she bothered with me.

If she had found me when I was still a beggar, would she have felt the same way? Would she have passed me by? Would she have cursed at me when I asked her for a bite of bread?

"What about your other grandchildren?" I asked.

She smiled softly and patted my cheek, letting me go. "The youngest is barely seven. I think they and I have plenty of time together yet. But you and I were robbed of our time, and I'll not stand to waste any more."

I said something then I still wish that I could take back. "No matter how much time you spend with me, it won't change anything. You're not going to get her back."

If I were her, I think I'd have struck me. She just levelled me with a hard look. "I understand that none of your life experience up until now has conditioned you to believe in honest motives, and made it feel possible that someone could genuinely want to have you around, Simon, but never insult me by thinking that I am like any of the people you've known before me."

And then she left.

Left me alone to dress for another night out.

And I did, because I actually felt like I owed it to her.

After that night, we didn't really have another talk for weeks. I also haven't tried to stay home again. I don't have it in me to oppose her now. Not after I was such a right arse to her.

It wasn't until after the opera, when she started to decline invitations, or foist them off on others, that I felt I needed to broach the subject again.

I tried to apologise that time, as well, but of course, she wouldn't hear of it. She said it was on her to apologise to me, that she hadn't realised how taxing it was on me, and she should have listened to me sooner and not placed me in that sort of position. And then she rang for tea and told me she wanted to talk.

I didn't do very much talking myself, but I sat with her and did my best to listen. It's still hard, paying attention to what's happening around me when all the time my skin is itching and I feel like I have to go, to move, to do _something_ , anything, or I'll die.

I think she could tell that sitting still was making me anxious, so then she proposed a walk and we went. Took a circuit around the Park, where we saw Miss Wellbelove and her companions, and she invited us to dine with her.

And Lady Ruth told her that we'd be "much pleased" to accept.

As soon as we were alone once more, she patted my hand, where it was holding her elbow. "Don't worry, my boy," she'd said. "It will only be people you already know there. Nothing formal. The doctor's father was one of my husband's oldest friends. Besides, you cannot deny an old lady her entertainments, and watching Mrs Wellbelove attempt to snare you for her daughter will be more thrilling than any show I've ever paid to see."

"Do you really think she will?" I asked, a sudden haze of panic threatening to overtake me.

I think she must have realised that I was not in a mood to humour her toying with me and she offered a gentle smile and another hand pat. "I daresay she will have other fodder for her schemes who rate higher than you in her book."

"Like who?"

I feared I already knew the answer to my question, because on the two unfortunate occasions I had collided with Mr Pitch, he had been in company with Miss Wellbelove. And I knew by then about their broken engagement. It was too much for me to hope that said broken engagement would lend me any reprieve. It was unlikely he would be overlooked for an invitation simply because Miss Wellbelove had thought better of marrying him.

She named a few men, but the only one whose name I heard was Mr Pitch.

I didn't like to think of it, Mr Pitch and Miss Wellbelove.

I'd spent a shameful amount of time already contemplating that match, wondering what had transpired to bring them together and then sunder them.

And there they both were, sitting across from me at table, making me feel for all the world as if I were better off having fallen in battle before any of this had transpired to bring me within their paths.

The meal itself was bearable. The Wellbeloves keep a very nice table and Mrs Wellbelove seemed to be rather amused by how complimentary I was about the food. I didn't mind, as long as I got to eat it.

The dishes kept me so preoccupied, I didn't pay attention to most of the conversations happening around me. They didn't have much to entice me in them, save for when the obligatory inquiries were made to Mr Pitch about his family.

I was still so curious about him, but I hadn't asked Lady Ruth for more details, because it felt like a betrayal of the sympathy I'd offered him when we met. If I told him to his face that it was horrible the way some people gossiped, then turned around and asked those same gossips for information about him, I would at best be a hypocrite.

That hasn't kept me from wondering about him, though. I don't know if anything can. When my head is clear of my nervous fits, he is the only thought I have. Has been since that first night. I was convinced he hated me, an opinion borne out by the fact that whenever our paths had taken us in the same direction from then on, he would completely ignore me, worse than if we were still strangers, more like I didn't even exist.

Then he was there at the theatre, seated directly opposite. I tried to pretend I didn't see him, wasn't thinking about whether he would look over and see me, if he would remember me, if he ever bothered to think about me, or if even that much was beneath his notice. And then I'd caught him looking at me. Not just looking. Staring. I could feel his gaze riveted to me for long minutes. Finally weary of it, I turned and met his eyes, but he didn't look away. It was…awkward. Was he trying to dare me to be the first one to give ground? How had it become a competition? A battle of wills?

Looking into each other's eyes like that, it was too intense. It made it hard for me to catch my breath, made my heart pound.

He kept watching me, though, until Miss Wellbelove said something to him, and laughed, and he tore his eyes away from me, a dark blush staining his cheeks. As I saw it spread across his dark golden skin, I could feel an echo to it on my own face.

I turned back to the stage, but it didn't last.

It felt like our eyes were being pulled to each other like iron filings to a magnet.

I let out a sigh of relief when he'd finally left with his friends, only to be so startled by that gun that I'd run all the way down to the saloon, with little more than a muttered apology to the Salisburys before I fled.

It was far from the ideal moment to come upon anyone I knew, but that it had to be _him_.

Why did he talk to me? His friends were waiting for him, and he had nothing of substance to say. Just more vague insults about my birth.

His behaviour was so odd, and made only odder when I found out he'd not just left me alone when Lady Ruth came to look for me, but left the theatre entirely.

Had he really been so cross about his coat?

I told myself to stop thinking about him. I told myself that he wasn't anything to me, and never would be. That try as I might, I'd never earn his respect, because I wasn't really worth it. I told myself that it wasn't anything to me, what he thought of me. (If he thought of me.)

I didn't listen.

At some point between the ball and tonight at dinner, he had ceased being a symbol of all the people I had to prove myself to, rather becoming instead a mystery I had to puzzle out.

I needed—not wanted, _needed_ —to know who he was. What were his thoughts and feelings? Why was he so cold, when his eyes held flashes of flame? Why was he in London with his friends when his father was on the point of disinheriting him? Why was he being disinherited? Why couldn't I stop thinking about him?

I was glad of the food, because it gave me somewhere to focus my attention that wasn't him (also, I'm always glad of food for its own sake). He did not attempt to afford me the same courtesy, and I was not the only one who caught him staring at me.

Both Mr Shepard and Miss Wellbelove commented on how distracted he seemed. Both looked at me as they said it. I did not appreciate the smile on Miss Wellbelove's face when she spoke. It felt a bit like she was teasing me, but I didn't think we knew each other well enough for that sort of thing.

Did she not like that Mr Pitch was paying me attention again? Maybe there was something between them after all. Is that why he had been so near laughing before and why he'd almost choked? Because Miss Wellbelove was much more to him than a sister? If that were so, then why the broken engagement?

He must have felt something for her, surely, if he had gone so far as to propose to her. (And she's lovely, why wouldn't he want her?) Perhaps it was one-sided, and she had only agreed because she felt it owed to him, or something. And now she was at pains to ensure he knew where he stood in her affections. (I was at pains to know where he stood in her affections.) (And where she stood in his.)

I can here admit (because no one will ever read this) that I made a study of their manner and their conversation. And her manner and conversation with the other unmarried gentlemen present. I made myself a scholar (wouldn't the real you be proud of me), though I came to no concrete conclusions.

They did often exchange private looks, which had a way of setting my teeth on edge for reasons I could not even begin to understand. (There was a part of me that feared they were sharing some private joke at my expense every time I spoke, but that was only some of the time.) Miss Wellbelove did attempt to draw me into conversation, only to be thwarted by Mr Pitch interposing some witty remark and drawing all of her focus back to himself.

Even more confounding was the fact that Mr Pitch more frequently looked my way than he did hers, and typically with a quite unreadable, but very intense expression on his face.

"What do you do with yourself, Captain?" Mr Shepard inquired politely. "When you're not attending your grandmother?"

He had chosen a rather inopportune time to ask me this, because I had just placed an admirable forkful of roast beef into my mouth and I was not much inclined to hurry through the chewing for the sake of politeness.

"Oh, yes, does Dame Salisbury ever let you out to graze on your own?" Mr Pitch leaned forward, as if he were truly interested. "Or has she been keeping you under lock and key this fortnight?"

"A fortnight, has it been?" Miss Wellbelove asked with an arched brow in his direction.

"Thereabouts," Mr Pitch grumbled back under his breath.

"Ignore them," Mr Shepard told me. (I still don't know if that is his first or last name, and I'm too afraid to ask now.)

"You are _my_ guests," Miss Wellbelove huffed good-naturedly.

"Which means you have to shew us courtesy and hospitality," Mr Shepard answered back with a bright smile. "Let the man answer me."

I took that as my cue and swallowed. "Well. I came to London to spend time with Lady Ruth, so that we could become acquainted. I've never been one for social events. Never had much occasion for them before. I prefer to spend my time out of doors."

"A sporting man, then," Miss Wellbelove guessed.

"Come now, Welby," Mr Pitch began before I could contradict her, "why speak around your point?" To me, he said, "do you hunt, Salisbury?"

"Oh, no, I've no taste for it."

All those guns and horns and hounds and horses. To what end? Terrorising a fox and all of the countryside along with it.

"A soldier with no taste for the hunt," Mr Pitch observed.

That rankled and I leaned forward a bit over my plate. "Tell me, Mr Pitch, have you much experience with war?"

He paled slightly, but otherwise his face betrayed no emotion. "Of course not."

"He also doesn't have much experience in estate management," Mr Shepard said, "or polite conversation. Hasn't stopped him pretending he can do both."

Mr Pitch opened his mouth to object, but closed it again, narrowing his eyes. After a beat, he returned his attention to me, and his expression and tone were completely different. Affected indifference. "A point in your favour, then," he pronounced. "Miss Wellbelove detests the sport." I wasn't sure what end the points were meant to serve in this exercise of his. "And do you ride? For if you do not, please console yourself that the lady will be quite done with you before your romance has even had a chance to blossom."

Miss Wellbelove hissed under her breath, "so help me, Basilton Pitch."

He waved a hand at her, a bored expression on his face. "How else am I to entertain myself, but in finding you a husband?"

"You just want mother to harass someone else." She argued. To me, she said, "don't listen to Basil. He'll have you think the worst of me."

"I'm sure he already thinks the worst of me," Mr Pitch replied.

Was I meant to object to that? Or was he challenging me to agree?

"Am I allowed to speak?" I asked.

They both turned to give me their full attention, which immediately made me regret my question.

"I don't ride," was all I could think to say.

It must have been the right thing, because they laughed, and it wasn't the mocking sort I would have anticipated from Mr Pitch. I watched the smile play on his face, and it made me smile, too. He really did look a different person when his face was animated with mirth and not malice.

"You must be the serious, studious type, then," Miss Wellbelove declared, but I could hear a lightness in her voice. It was different than her tone from before, though, not the cutting, quizzing kind of humour she used on Mr Pitch. "I suppose you've gotten your tanned and freckled complexion from many hours spent in a mouldering library reading unexpurgated Classics."

I had no idea what that word meant—I'm not certain I've even written the correct word, but since I'm the only one who will see this, I suppose it doesn't really matter. I didn't think the knowing would much affect my answer. "Quite the opposite, though I'm sure Mr Davy would have preferred that I had done," I said with a shrug. "It was never my forte."

"Who is Mr Davy?" Mr Shepard asked.

"Ah," I breathed. I hadn't meant to bring him up. As committed as I am not to think on him, he will find his way through my barriers, always at the worst moments. I didn't want to talk about him, didn't want to have to explain.

"Of course," Mr Pitch said, "the man who ran the school you attended as a boy, wasn't he?"

I stared at him in disbelief. How on earth did this man know about that? If he had ever heard the name Mr Davy in connection with me, it was not as my school's headmaster.

"Uh, yeah. Yes. He was," I barely managed to make my way through a response.

He nodded, in that way people do when they've had confirmation of something they already knew was correct, and are closing the subject. And he did, because the next thing he said was, "surely, you know our man Salisbury is a fiend for the opera, Welby. You saw him at the theatre."

"I know _you_ did."

They kept talking, speculating on increasingly unlikely pastimes for me. They didn't need my input for that. (I didn't exactly have input to give. I don't have any pastimes as I can name.)

I let them talk. I was too focused on what Mr Pitch had said. The man obviously knew who Mr Davy was, if he knew so much about my history with him. Knew the name, knew what he was to me, knew that I wouldn't want to talk about it.

Where had he obtained his information? And, more importantly, had Mr Pitch just intervened to spare my feelings?

"They're always like this," Mr Shepard told me, pulling me from my thoughts.

"Huh?" I asked, forcing myself to look away from Mr Pitch.

"The pair of them, they're absolutely impossible. I think it's a hazard of their upbringing. Always have to be the centre of attention, but never actually want any scrutiny."

I laughed. "I'm not sure they'd appreciate that perspective."

He shrugged. "I never mince words, Simon. May I call you Simon? I'm paid handsomely for the words I use and what I do with them. I don't speak lightly."

I suppose he was going to call me Simon now. "I can't imagine."

"Which part of it?"

I hope he didn't think I was insulting him. "The people wanting to pay to hear you talk part. I mean, for me. No one would ever pay to hear me talk. Maybe they'd pay to shut me up."

"Is that an option?"

That was Mr Pitch. (Of course it was.) Though his voice didn't sound cruel—it was playful. I didn't think that was something I'd ever hear from him: playfulness.

I decided to play along. I was going to be stuck here as long as the Salisburys wanted to stay, and I could do worse than making myself agreeable. "I'd certainly pay to shut you up, Mr Pitch."

That earned me a splutter. I never thought I'd see the like from him. "I beg your pardon?"

"Is that not why you were enquiring?" I knew it wasn't, but I had for once found myself with the advantage in a verbal sparring match, and I was prepared to capitalise. "I've no need of my commission now I'm Lady Ruth's lap dog." I know he had called me as much once, though it was on one of those evenings when he was pretending he didn't know me, and I was standing right behind him. (And he kept turning round.) "I'm certain I could get a tidy sum for it."

Mr Pitch clearly had absolutely no idea what to make of me. "I—"

Miss Wellbelove looked between us. "I'm sorry, what's happening here?"

"I believe Captain Salisbury just gained the upperhand," Shepard explained.

Mr Pitch: "You only want to shut me up because you don't like the fact that I refuse to fawn all over you like one of your grandmother's hangers-on."

Me: "I've never been fawned over in my life. I know that's impossible for you to understand, as you obviously rely on unearned praise to sustain you."

A small smile was tugging at the corner of his mouth now. "One cannot live by bread alone."

"Why did I invite you?" Miss Wellbelove asked her wine glass. She turned decidedly away from us and to her neighbour on her other side, one of her friends from the ball. (All I could remember is that she was named for some sort of a seasoning.) (Actually, I think all of Miss Wellbelove's friends are named after seasonings.)

"I don't think you could keep from talking even if I did pay you," I said to Mr Pitch. "You like the sound of your own voice too much to part with it."

Penny, I've no idea how I came to be so bold, no notion what possessed me. But there was something irresistible about that light that kept sparking in his eyes and I couldn't look away from it. I couldn't get enough of it, and I needed to keep it there. The only way I knew to do that was to fix all of his attention on me. The words were just flowing out of me without any effort.

Talking to him like that, it felt natural. Easy. Comfortable.

I can think of no reason for that, given our past encounters, but I was actually starting to have a bit of fun. And as odd as that was, I wasn't inclined to complain.

"You sound very certain in your accusations," he observed wryly.

"Shall I explain them to you?"

He waved me on. "Do indulge me."

I was starting to feel like Miss Wellbelove. What _was_ happening?

Mr Pitch was being a bit nice to me. He was still being an arsehole, but just then he was an arsehole with a sense of humour.

I could have given him the truth. What I really thought of him. That he was spoilt and had spent his whole life being praised for every tiny accomplishment by people who had an interest in keeping in his good graces and had grown accustomed to thinking of himself as special, and that that had only been reinforced by the gossip that swirled around him, because it had taught him to believe that he mattered to other people enough for them to pry.

But I didn't say any of that.

"If you're the only one talking, no one else can contradict you. You strike me as the sort of man who always likes to be right."

"A very cogent argument, Salisbury. You are, of course, absolutely correct. I _am_ always right."

I laughed at that. Actually laughed, at something Mr Pitch said.

I hadn't even noticed that the meal was drawing to a close until Mrs Wellbelove rose and invited the other ladies into the drawing room.

It had the unfortunate consequence of slicing right through whatever Mr Pitch and I had tentatively been building. The ladies' departure seemed to call him back to himself and I watched as his countenance shuttered and he resumed his wonted guise of aloofness. It left me with an inexplicable feeling of loss.

I hated it. I can't even tell you why, but I hated it.

Mr Pitch turned to my uncle and spoke to him in a low tone and Lord Salisbury laughed. I don't know what he said. I didn't think it was about me (Lord Salisbury is not the kind to laugh at someone else's expense and he's been nothing but good and kind to me), but knowing that I wasn't meant to be privy to it bothered me in a way I couldn't articulate. (What did they even have to talk about?)

Mr Shepard drew me back into conversation, recounting to me stories of his travels. I had only travelled for one purpose, and that was to fight. But Mr Shepard had experienced so many different things, and known so many different kinds of people, and he had left behind him a trail of friends he could trace back whenever he was ready to move on again.

Now he was here, an outsider much as I was, I wondered what he made of it all. He seemed to find something in this company, at least, that he liked.

Though, unlike me, Mr Shepard, I learned quickly, is the sort of man who can make himself at home anywhere, and put anyone at ease. Yet I think I could still see what drew him to this house and this dining room. Dr Wellbelove is jovial and talkative. There was no overwhelming crush of pretension here as I had found elsewhere in Town, at least in the places Lady Ruth had taken me.

Our host called out to Mr Shepard for a toast, and he was quick to oblige, leaving me few options for conversation. My uncle was seated too far away to speak to comfortably. Besides Lord Salisbury, the only other man at table was the defected Frenchman, _Monsieur_ Sacha. Given his English is mediocre and my French is nearly nonexistent, we didn't have much to say to one another. The most I could understand is that he had been a famous performer of some kind and that he hated Napoleon.

For his part, Mr Pitch had abandoned his conversation with my uncle, and his chair, and was wandering aimlessly about the room. He had managed to find a small book somewhere and was occupying himself in skimming the pages. (Could he not let off reading for the entire length of a dinner party?) 

You know me, I'm usually happiest when I don't have to talk to anyone. But being the only person at table who wasn't talking, and already feeling like I didn't really belong in that circle, started wearing on my nerves.

I should have liked to disappear some place quiet. The murmur of voices around me, and Shepard's well-honed speechifying was overwhelming on my senses, now I had no distraction from any of it.

I could hear your voice in my mind, telling me to breathe. That I should put down my glass and try not to just drink it away. (I did put down my glass.) (Even though I know you won't see this to worry, it means something to me.)

I was starting to feel itchy and hot with all the suspense of being stuck there and not knowing when I'd be able to leave. The lack of any action or timetable was starting to make me feel so restless, I thought I might explode from it.

So, I got up and started wandering around, too.

And of course I wandered over to Mr Pitch, because what else was I going to do? When my eyes aren't following him, I guess my feet are.

"What are you after, Salisbury?" He asked me, not even glancing up from his book.

"Riveting read?"

He raised his eyes to mine, but otherwise did not move. "It's a medical textbook, actually. Rather dull. I've always been more partial to literature myself. Shakespeare, Plato, the Classics."

"Oh."

"Do you read, Salisbury?"

"Are you asking me if I like to read, or are you asking me if I'm able to?"

"I presume you're literate given you're an officer in the Army."

Also, he knew about my schooling, so that had probably been a stupid question to ask. I just wasn't accustomed to him speaking without insulting me.

"I don't know," I said. "I don't have much chance to. I tell Penny she reads enough for both of us. Besides, she's always reading things at me."

Something about what I said made him close his book and look up at me fully. (I suppose he was actually looking down at me, seeing as he's taller.) I thought at first he was so horrified by my answer that he was going to lay into me about what a disgrace I am for not liking to read.

I was utterly taken aback when the first words out of his mouth were: "Penny? Who is she, your sweetheart?"

I'm afraid I laughed right in his face. Loudly. I probably drew all the other eyes in the room to us, but it couldn't be helped.

"Penny is my best friend," I told him. "She's sort of like my sister. I was practically living with her family before Lady Ruth came to fetch me."

"In Lancashire?"

I shook my head. "No, in Watford."

"Watford? I thought you were from Manchester."

"How is it, Mr Pitch, you've come to learn so much of my history?"

He dropped his gaze to the book he was still holding, picking at the seam of the cloth cover on one of the inside corners. I doubt Dr Wellbelove would like it very much if Mr Pitch took apart one of his medical texts. It was nicely bound and had likely cost a small fortune. (Probably he wasn't used to worrying about the expense.) (With all his money, Mr Pitch could have bought the press and bindery and gifted them both to Dr Wellbelove in recompense.)

"You said yourself when we met, people talk. You make an interesting subject. The sort of story people are only accustomed to reading about in novels."

"People talk about you, too."

"I am aware." His tone was getting more clipped and defensive. With every sentence, he was sliding back into the person I'd met before. I didn't want that. I liked the version of Mr Pitch I'd met that night, but I couldn't tell which one was the truer example.

"What I mean to say is that I've not paid any of it any mind. People talk. Sometimes they give you the real story, and most of the time, they don't. It felt only decent not to go prying into your life the way you've clearly been prying into mine."

I hadn't thought I was angry about it until I started talking, but I suppose I was. I don't know why I expected him to pay me the same courtesy as I'd paid him, knowing how little regard he had for me.

"Obviously, your first mistake was thinking I was decent."

"No," I said. "I have never thought you were decent. Not until tonight."

His right eyebrow lifted up. "Why tonight?"

He sounded as if he were affronted at the very implication that I could have, at any moment, had a positive opinion of him.

"You know something about Mr Davy, don't you? That's why you answered for me when Shepard asked about him."

"I only know what I said. I don't know why you're making this into something it clearly is not. If I had waited on you to form any coherent answer, we would still be languishing away in the suspense."

He was doing that thing again. I could hear it in the harshness in his voice. Could see it in the way his eyes started to move around as he spoke. Could sense it in the way he had pulled the book against his chest. The way one of his feet had moved back, so that it was resting against the leg of the side table he was standing in front of. He was trying to find an exit. He was trying to escape from this conversation and from me.

I reached out and pushed on the book cover with a finger and he swayed backward a bit. "I can tell you're trying to avoid this. Avoid me. You're happy to joke, but the moment you have to answer a real question, you get skittish as a horse."

"I thought you said you didn't ride."

I rolled my eyes. "I've been around horses before, Pitch. And I've been around deserters."

He didn't say anything else. I set my jaw and stared him down. It didn't seem to do anything. (It worked with soldiers.)

"Stop prying into my life!" I growled.

"What are you so afraid I will find in it?"

_Everything_ , I thought. The tiny, sad, frightened heart of me. The broken parts, and the shattered nerves, and the panic, and the ugly things that crawled out of their holes that I can't seem to fit back inside of me.

"Nothing," I said.

He considered me a moment, quietly, seriously. He looked deep, deep into my eyes. I let him, though I shouldn't have. Who knows what I could have betrayed in that look? Who knows when I could have broken and collapsed?

But I held myself firm. I don't know what he found in me, but when he finally turned away, I felt scraped out. Empty. Cold. Bereft.

"Well, I suppose I had better go see what the wife is up to," Dr Wellbelove declared, but I didn't feel any relief at my freedom from this prison of a dining room.

I knew as soon as I stepped back, Mr Pitch would step forward and then he'd make his escape from me. He wouldn't look at me for the rest of the evening. Wouldn't speak to me. Would act as though I weren't even there.

I wanted to hold him there, in that spot. I don't know why.

"Basil," Dr Wellbelove called again. "I'm sure the ladies will be solicitous for you to indulge them."

With a triumphant sneer, he took one step to the side and I had to let him.

He slipped away and I felt like I had lost the chance for something. A glimpse at the real person he was at such pains to hide. (I knew what that was like.)

I followed the gentlemen into the drawing room. Lady Ruth waved me over to her and I sat and I smiled but I felt numb.

Not numb in a good way, like I wasn't hurting. I can't explain it.

Miss Wellbelove poured coffee and handed out cake and Lady Ruth kept trying to get me to eat more of it. I did, to oblige her, but I didn't taste it.

I was too distracted.

One of Miss Wellbelove's friends—the one with the freckles and the springy brown hair—started giggling and clapping her hands at a suggestion from the Frenchman.

"No," Mr Pitch said flatly, though no one had spoken to him.

"Oh, please," the lady implored.

_Monsieur_ Sacha joined in her pleas. (At least, I think he did. I couldn't understand what he was saying, but he was nodding and smiling, so he seemed to be in favour of whatever was happening.)

"Go on, then Basilton," Miss Wellbelove said imperiously. "You know it's the only reason we asked you. Time to sing for your supper."

He gave her a hard look. "You are a bloody tyrant."

She made a face back at him. "You should know all about tyranny, Tyrannus."

"I will walk out of this house right now," he threatened.

Dr Wellbelove walked up and patted his shoulder. He was holding something in his other hand. An instrument. "Humour us," he said with an encouraging smile and held the instrument out to him.

It was a violin.

It figured that Mr Pitch would play the violin.

Mr Shepard started cheering him on, then the ladies joined in, and _Monsieur_ Sacha and Lord Salisbury, who had both overindulged during the toasts hopped to their feet. The Frenchman started doing a bit of a jig and my uncle extended his hand to my aunt. With a laugh, she took it and stood up with him. Apparently, the after dinner entertainments were going to include music and dancing.

I was very grateful to have Lady Ruth's arm leaning on me so that I wouldn't feel obliged to offer myself to one of the ladies.

"Play the Mozart," Mrs Wellbelove called out.

I could see Mr Pitch's jaw move just a bit, but he smiled at her and nodded. "As the hostess requests."

And then he lifted the violin, tipped his head, closed his eyes, and started to play.

I don't know what the song was, and it's not like I know anything about music, but. Oh, Pen. It's no wonder everyone was after him. He was incredible.

The piece was something lively. I could barely trace his fingers across the strings at times he moved them so quickly. Though the song was fast, and felt like it was meant for a party such as this, there was emotion just pouring off him.

When he was playing, he became someone else entirely. Yet another version of Basilton Pitch, this one probably the truest. His face was peaceful but focused, his movements fluid but his posture firm and perfect. His long hair whipped about his face and he seemed filled with such a fury and passion as he was transported in his mind to some other space. Wherever it was that the music took him.

I felt like I was right there with him.

I was getting short of breath again, but it wasn't unpleasant. It was like I didn't want to breathe, because I didn't want to disturb anything. I felt suspended between the notes, just like those strings.

He drew out the last note, let it ring out so that I felt chills, and opened his eyes. He was looking directly at me.

Something inside of me got knocked off balance. Or maybe it got knocked back into a place it should have been but wasn't.

I think I was finally starting to understand.

The room went quiet, the song ended, and the spell broke.

He drew himself up, lowered his arms, and took a good-natured bow to rousing applause and cries of "encore."

But he didn't play an encore.

He made his excuses to the Wellbeloves and left. Again.

And I've not been able to put him out of my mind. This time, however, I think I know why.

I wish I could talk to the real you. I wish you could help me sort this out.

I can't figure out anything. All I know is I want him to look at me like that again.

I want—

I want _him_.

And I don't know what to do about that.


	4. At Swords' Points

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Baz lets Dev and Niall drag him out for some exercise at Angelo's School of Arms, but his carefree morning is interrupted when Lord Salisbury shows up with his nephew in tow.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Disclaimer: I don't really know anything about swords or fencing. I took one semester-long foil fencing class in college over a decade ago and I don't think that counts. Also, I'll be honest, I really don't think an actual fencing sparring match would result in anyone routinely winding up on their arse, but it kept happening, and I kept letting it because it was funny.
> 
> _En Garde!_

_23 March, 1810_

_Dear Mother,_

Salisbury is going to be the death of me.

He did an admirable job of trying to end my life today, and had me on the verge of begging him to put me out of my misery and finish me off, but I'll not be the first Pitch who pleads for mercy on his back.

(Now I've written it out, my morning sounds far more entertaining than it actually proved, but such is, unfortunately, my life.)

And my day got worse from there.

Once I managed to escape Salisbury, I came home to find a letter waiting for me. Can you guess who sent it?

Yes, if you can believe it, Malcolm Grimm has, at long last, found his backbone.

I have officially been summoned home.

I must admit, I am rather impressed with Father. I had been convinced he would place the burden on Daphne to guilt me into returning.

I am _strongly advised_ to be back in Hampshire by the first.

There is, apparently, to be a house party.

I have decided to be philosophical about it. I knew my time as a free man was waning. I am surprised he waited nearly to the end of the season to do it, though I suspect that has less to do with his generosity of feeling and more to do with his distaste for confrontation.

(I did learn from the master.)

I've already sworn off ever leaving my apartments again. A flight to the country should deliver the same effect, but with the added spice of stirring up yet more scandal and speculation in my wake.

It will be some relief to be out of reach, at least until everyone else gets bored of London and inevitably finds their way after me. Since the dinner party, I have found that, much to my detriment, I possess friends who are inexplicably concerned with my well being. It is a heavy cross to bear.

I did not think to worry about Shepard telling Dev and Niall what happened at dinner, seeing as he doesn't particularly like them, but somehow they found out. I know Welby is innocent; she would never willingly pay attention to Dev, lest she unintentionally encourage him. I suppose she could have told Niall—he is presumably my closest friend—but if she were going to betray me like that, she'd do it in front of me, to make sure that I knew it was her.

Regardless of the author of my betrayal (everyone protests their innocence), the cretins bounded into my library a couple of afternoons later (prompt as ever) and attempted to spirit me away to some hell. I told them they could go to Hell if they liked, but to leave me be.

We compromised. (That is to say, I told them no and then they did what I wanted.) (Nearly.)

I stayed in, and they stayed with me. We played cards and they drank themselves under the table. I had Stephens put them up and then went back to the book I'd been reading before they swung my door off its hinges.

The problem with this (apart from having to spend what I had planned to be a peaceful evening instead with two rowdy men getting absolutely soused) is that, as they spent the night, I had to confront them again the following day. And again fend off their implorings to go out.

I'm not certain how much they knew about the dinner at Welby's. Had Shepard, or whoever it had been, told them about Salisbury? Although I know at least Niall suspects that I am suffering under a very ill-advised infatuation, yet I doubt he can conceive exactly how lost I am.

I am lost. I barely know anything about Salisbury, but I can't help being drawn in. At one time, I could have comforted myself that I was only so smitten with him because he looks like he was sculpted by Praxiteles. That excuse grows weaker with every encounter. He's the furthest thing from a lifeless tribute to beauty in marble as one can be. There is something deep and dark and feral inside of him and I want to claw it out. I want to see it, to let it free. To taste his wildness and his pain.

It is definitely pain. That much is obvious in his eyes. He accused me of trying to escape, but he spent as much of the dinner absent as he did present. I don't think anyone else noticed it, but no one else watches Salisbury the way I do. I could always tell the moment that he withdrew into himself. There did not seem to be any common thread that tied it all together, but so often I would look up at him only to see him staring down at his plate, his hands still, his forehead creased, hearing and seeing nothing around him.

Those are the times I find myself the most captivated by him. I want to know his mind. The shadows of hurt and confusion and anger that cross his face. Why he goes quiet.

I know some of it, of course. I know about Mr Davy, which Salisbury obviously didn't realise and didn't appreciate. He must think I've been asking around about him, which I was tempted to do, except I can't dare to betray any of my interest in him. Matters are precarious enough for me, and I can't bring any of that scrutiny down on him just because I'm too curious for my own good. He doesn't deserve any share of my infamy. (Neither do I.)

I can understand Salisbury's reaction at dinner; I can understand why he immediately suspected me of malice and ill intentions. (He says that he hasn't been asking about me, but I don't imagine there is any scenario in which he can have avoided hearing the rumours.) He must know what I am. I half-suspect it is the reason he pays such careful mind to me whenever we have been thrown together. Mistrust appears to be his default at all times; it would only follow that he would feel an even greater degree for someone who had insulted him at every opportunity, and even more so, that he would be suspicious of the attentions of a man all of London believes to be a sodomite.

I don't know that it will matter much, in the end, who are my parents, what my family names, or how many friends I can yet count, nor what influence they are willing to apply to assist me. The friends I've left, the ones who know and who have stuck by, don't offer much in the way of any influence besides.

I think ultimately, it will come down to bargaining.

How great a fortune, I sometimes wonder, will it take to buy my life? (Is it a life worth buying?)

My point is that I do not blame Salisbury for getting angry with me knowing his personal business, because I know how dangerous that kind of insight can prove to a person. But I have not committed the sin he thinks I have in prying. (I haven't committed a lot of the sins he probably thinks I have.) (I've heard the rumours; I know what they say.)

I have not pried, but I know.

I know that his mother, Lucy Salisbury, fell in love with a poor Welshman from an insignificant family and eloped with him rather than face a future without him, knowing her parents would never approve the match. I know it almost tore the Salisbury family apart, especially when Miss Salisbury got with child and wrote a single letter home to her mother while she was in her confinement. Whatever was the result of that letter, Miss Salisbury, and the man she had eloped with, were never heard from again.

Two decades later, when a nobody vicar named Mr Davy died, Miss Salisbury's things were discovered in among his effects and Lady Ruth and Lord Salisbury were notified.

The next anyone heard, Lady Ruth was arriving at her townhouse on St. James's Street with a new grandson in tow.

Those are the facts as I had them. I haven't gone looking for more. The turnings of that tale seemed only too clear. And as long as I've known Lady Ruth, it's not my place to ask her for anything more than she is willing to share on the subject.

I'm sure Daphne's gotten more of the full picture. I've been tempted to write her about it, but I don't see how I can couch such a thing to her casually in a letter. I love Daphne, but I don't think we'll ever have the sort of relationship where I can ask her for that information without having to justify my need for it.

If she does know, she hasn't seen fit to share it with me. (Did I tell you that she wrote me again last week to check in on me, even though I've still not answered any of her other letters?) (What did Father ever do to deserve either one of you?) (Don't answer that.)

I think I'll see if I can get a chance to talk with Daphne once I'm back home.

Given Salisbury's extreme reaction when he found out that I knew who Mr Davy was, I get the impression there is actually much more to his history than even I have been able to piece together. I've been turning over possibilities in my mind ever since. It's not as though I've been able to think of anything but our dear Captain since he first stuttered at me in a ballroom. (He is beautiful when he's flustered.)

Salisbury must be aware that we all know of the scandal surrounding his parentage. That can't have come as any surprise to him, so that can't be the reason for his anger. It's possible, I suppose, that he simply didn't think I would have known Mr Davy's name, though that still does not explain his vehemence.

Unless he thought I would try to tear the man down and he was being preemptively defensive on his behalf.

Given what I've heard, I don't think Salisbury has any reason to defend Mr Davy, but I will grant it's possible he has more information than I do on the circumstances that perhaps excuse that man's behaviour. (Though he did say that he thought I was trying to spare his feelings. Does that mean it would have been painful for him to talk about Mr Davy because of the kind of man he was, or because he's still mourning the loss of him?)

I could have asked Salisbury when I saw him today. I've never shewn any compunctions at being rude to him before. I doubt he would have answered me, but neither is the reason that I didn't do it.

Truth be told, I was enjoying myself too much.

Enjoying him, being around him.

As part of what has proved an ongoing campaign, Niall and Dev appeared again at my door today, as they have every day, and proposed an outing: Angelo's.

I've not spent enough time there of late, and I'm afraid I was a bit stiff and out of practise. I started myself off easy, running through drills and sparring with Dev. He still has absolutely no mind for strategy. I didn't hesitate to exploit it.

I was a little surprised at how good it felt to have the weight of a hilt back in my hand, the sweat and burn of muscle with the physical exertion.

I promised myself that I would make it a point not to stay away so long again.

After I had a bout with Dev and Dev had a bout with Niall, Niall and I faced off and I finally started to feel a rhythm come back into my limbs. My body remembered the movements and I tried to let myself simply be present. It's always been difficult to quiet my mind, but it's gotten worse of late. There are so many concerns plaguing me these days, I hardly know which one to give precedence.

When one of those concerns walked into the academy, my decision was made for me.

I think I knew in theory that Salisbury would have learnt to fight with any manner of weapons. That he must have gone through some kind of rigorous physical training before being unleashed on the unsuspecting French. But the Army has its own weapons and instructors; it has its own training facilities.

It made no sense that Salisbury would be invading the academy instead of using the Army's buildings. It is the only excuse I can make for taking as long as I did to understand that it was him watching me from across the room with his uncle.

Perhaps Lord Salisbury had a similar tactic for his charge as my friends did for me. More likely, Salisbury never thought of me unless I was standing before him and insulting him, and Lord Salisbury had brought his nephew to the fencing academy to practise fencing.

"Captain Snow," I called out to him, because I had, apparently, lost all control of my faculties and my mouth. "You are aware this is an amateur establishment. Don't you have your own gymnasium to haunt?"

He was still standing at some distance to me, but I caught what appeared to be a small smile at one side of his mouth. He shook his head at me. His expression was something rueful.

"Lord Salisbury brought me here to get out some of my restlessness."

"Simon, I've told you that you don't have to keep using my title. You can call me Uncle. Even in public."

Salisbury looked uncertain, but he nodded. I could tell that nod wasn't an agreement as much as it was an ackowledgement of the request that had been made and a stubborn refusal to follow through on it.

I liked that Salisbury could be stubborn. He has this certain way of cocking his head a bit and setting his jaw forward, like he's a bull digging in his hooves.

There is a strength in that stubborness, not just physical, but strength of character, too, I find unreasonably attractive.

"I can understand that," I said. "What I mean is, why are you here when surely, the Army can provide you with actual weapons?"

He screwed up his a face a fraction, and pushed a hand through the burst of bronze curls atop his head, not attempting to hide his discomfort. "I-I don't really think that's any of your business, Mr Pitch."

It probably wasn't, but as much as I would have been perfectly content to stand in that very spot the entire day through and stare at him, I was also very put out at his audacity in shewing up there without warning and spoiling my afternoon with an unavoidable reminder of my very unfortunate infatuation with him.

"What do you like?" Dev called over to him.

"Pardon?" Salisbury asked, looking briefly to his uncle as if for assistance.

"Your blade, your weapon, your poison. What do you like?"

Salisbury shrugged. "I've only used a sabre."

"We use sabres here, too," Lord Salisbury told his nephew.

There were a number of other men about, running through drills and sparring and some standing around in conversation, before and after their own bouts. It didn't take long, however, for Angelo to notice the two men and make his way over. He was no fool, he wasn't going to miss the chance to give Lord Salisbury his personal attention.

He looked very pleased to meet the Captain, shaking his hand and smiling officiously. He was talking to him and gesturing at the room around us. With a pat on Salisbury's shoulder, which Salisbury did _not_ like, Angelo led them off, presumably to procure gloves and masks and sabres.

"Oi!"

There was a very undignified swat to my backside to accompany that ill-mannered shout. I jumped and spun around, my own sabre at the ready, to murder whichever cheeky wretch was trying to get himself killed.

Dev and Niall were both staring at me. Dev was smiling broadly.—No, he was _leering_. "See something you like?" He teased.

I shut my eyes and shook my head, letting out a long breath. "I had hoped that you'd eventually grow out of your idiocy. It would seem I was mistaken, because you grow more idiotic by the day."

Dev was unaffected. "You think we don't see the way you look at him? It's not just once or twice when you can sneak in a glance, either. It's constant. If you ask me—"

"I didn't."

—"it's a bit creepy."

" _I didn't ask you_ ," I repeated, slowly and with ruthless intent behind every word.

"Baz," Niall began, but I cut my sabre across the air between us, and they both abruptly stopped speaking. That was more like it.

"I know I'm nothing more than a joke to you, but you will at least have the decency to treat me with enough respect not to laugh in my face. And to remember that everything you say in public is very likely to be overheard by others who may not find my…situation as amusing as the two of you obviously do. Your words can have very serious and very permanent consequences for me, and I don't think there is a single thing I have done in the time we have known each other for you to treat me and my life with such disregard."

I hadn't meant to say it.

I have thought it, in a hundred different iterations, I have thought it so many times. This was the first time any of it actually made it out of my mouth. (More proof I had lost control of it.)

I had been scared, I think, of what would happen, if I spoke up for myself. (There was a part of me that also wasn't convinced that I was worth standing up for.) Dev and Niall were the only friends I had left, from before. A wiser man (Shepard) would have told me that it didn't matter who they were or how long I had known them, that if they didn't make me feel good to be around, I should cut them out of my life. Most of the time, I do still feel good around them. It's easy with the two of them, because we've just always been in each other's lives. We know how to be around each other. We don't always get on, and they have never understood my affinity for academics, but it's famliar and up until recently, it's felt safe, too. I know they're not acting this way to be malicious, but I don't think they really comprehend what life is like for me.

I said it. It needed to be said. It was overdue. And it was probably obvious to them as much as it was to me how very long I had been holding all of that inside of me, how long it had been struggling to push its way out. The words just kept pouring out of me, my voice growing harder and louder with my conviction.

Neither one of them spoke at first. They stared stupidly at me, mouths agape.

Dev cleared his throat, swallowed, nudged Niall's arm with his own. Niall refocused, dropped his head.

"Sorry, Baz," he said, his voice quiet. "We-we don't mean anything by it. We—"

"Yes, you do," I said. Now that I had let the words out, they were determined to continue. "I know you don't think it's hurtful, but it is, and I need you to get your heads out of your arses and think about how it feels being in my position."

Dev opened his mouth, but I held up my free hand. "No, I'm right. You two may act this way with most of your acquaintance, but most of your acquaintance is not going to be hanged for you making a joke in very poor taste about their private concerns. It's different for me, and if you can't do this one thing for me, then I don't think I can keep on like this."

Was it coincidence that as I was saying this, Salisbury reentered my line of sight and my mind flashed back on the night at the opera, when he asked me why I was friends with people who were rude to me? I don't know about coincidence, but I don't think I would have ever found the courage to say anything to Dev and Niall about my real feelings without Salisbury's words that night. (When have I ever spoken aloud about my feelings?) I knew he was right, of course, I had known for a while, but I hadn't let myself see it, because I was terrified of what it would mean for me if they, too, abandoned me when they had been the only ones to stand by me after Oxford.

I wasn't alone any longer, though. Not really. I would always have Welby, for better or worse (even without marrying her).

(Jesus Christ. Is that why I agreed to her ridiculous scheme?)

And I had Shepard now, for however long he decided to remain in England.

(I won't count Fiona because she is my aunt, and you know as much as I love her, she is more curse than blessing.)

Seeing Salisbury, who presumably had faced innumerable obstacles to where he now was, somehow reunited with the family he'd been denied his whole life, lit a fire under me and gave me something almost like confidence. Even, if I dare be so bold, bravery.

If Dev and Niall couldn't take me for all I was, then I was content to let them go. (I make this assertion here with much more certainty than I felt in that moment, even if I was holding a sabre.)

I can make myself sound confident and strong in this letter with no one to know otherwise, but I'll not be disingenuous, even to myself. The only reason I sound so strong in my ultimatum is because I did not have to test my resolve.

They caved rather quickly. I didn't allow them to apologise when they tried to, because I could not stomach having to endure that kind of punishment.

"Don't drag it on," I grumbled. (I will not say I was feeling a bit touched that they were quick to try to make their amends.) (But I will say that I was feeling a certain way about it I shall not here name.) "Just don't do it again."

They were only too happy to accept such a generous condescension and Niall took up his sabre again. "Ready for another?"

"I'll take victor," Salisbury called out, making his way toward us. He looked exquisite in his fencing jacket and tan breeches, but it would break my heart to watch him tie a mask over those curls.

There was a pathetically charming bounce to his step and a crooked grin on his face. He was excited.

I was less so, knowing he was going to observe, and that he also meant to spar with me. (I say "me" because you and I both know that I was always going to best Niall.) (And I did.)

Niall is considerably more mental than Dev, who has always been too aggressive in his assaults. Niall will feint and adjust his guard, vary his footwork, balance his offensive and defensive maneouvres. He's too precise, though. He follows too closely to classic tactics and leaves himself open for surprise when I can predict his next move.

It was harder than it should have been, though, to defeat Niall. I found myself struggling to concentrate for the first time ever in a bout.

I could hardly think of anything but Salisbury, watching me.

His presence there was a tangible thing in my mind, an obstacle I had to constantly step around. It was so difficult to resist looking over at him, to see what he thought of my technique (of me), just to see him because I can never get my fill of the sight of him.

I gave myself a strict command to carry on as though it were any ordinary day at Angelo's, as if we did not have an audience. I told myself to forget about Salisbury, to put him from my mind. I would not think of him, I would not look at him, I would not try to shew off for him.

Of course, I failed on all counts.

Did I put a touch more vigour in my thrusts and lightness in my steps? Did I think as much about the approach in my attack as I did about the angle that would shew my form off to greatest advantage? Did I possibly even go so far as to embellish the heaviness of my breathing and make my grunts a little huskier?

Yes. Yes, I did. All of it. And I have absolutely no shame about it.

Perhaps the best part was the conviction that even if they knew exactly what I was doing, Niall and Dev had just promised they'd leave off teasing me and could, therefore, not say a single thing about any of it.

Once I'd gotten in my final touch, Niall and I stood back, saluted each other, and then I tore off my mask to breathe.

I couldn't keep myself from looking at Salisbury as I did it. He was still focused on me. That was good. I just wanted to keep his eyes on me at all times. My hair was a disaster, sadly, so I took a calculated risk (still trying my advantage with a new tactic) and shook it loose, letting it fall wildly around my face. I'm sure it didn't look nearly up to my usual standards, but Salisbury was flatteringly mesmerised.

His eyes followed my fingers as I ran them through the dampened strands (the wave had gotten denser with the humidity), and the blue in them got darker. His lips hung open in that decidedly stupid manner, but that only made me want to kiss him.

Once the thought entered my mind, I was done for.

I have no reference for comparison, but that didn't keep me from playing it out in my mind in very vivid detail.

"It looks like you're mine, Pitch," he said, finally collecting himself once I had left my hair alone.

_Oh, if only._

I couldn't let him go unanswered. I raised an eyebrow. "Do you even know what you're doing, Salisbury?"

He rolled his eyes and offered me a huff. "You think I don't know how to handle a blade?"

"I think you don't know how to handle one you're not used to."

He shrugged and looked down at the weapon he was holding in his hand. "It is a good deal lighter and smaller than what I'm used to working with. I'm sure I'll still be able to manage trouncing you."

"You need more finesse with a finer weapon. You don't strike me as the kind to be brimming with it."

"I think you're only trying to rile me up so I get flustered and you can try to take advantage."

"I would never even think of taking an unfair advantage over an opponent."

"Ha. Try to sound more convincing next time you're going to lie to my face."

I couldn't figure out what Salisbury was about. He was smiling openly at me, which he has never done, and his tone was playful, more like it had been at dinner.

It felt almost like flirting. But Salisbury would have had no reason to flirt with me.

Whatever had put him into his good humour, I wasn't going to question it. I was just happy to be the one to receive his attentions. I was probably preening under the influence of those lively blue eyes like an utter fool. (Which is exactly what I am. A fool for him.)

"I think you're only talking big because you're trying to put me off," he said.

"And why would I be doing that?" I asked.

"Because you know that I'm better than you and you can't confront the possibility that a foundling from Manchester could be better than you at something."

Manchester. I wanted to ask him about his past. He must have been born there, so what was he doing living in Watford with his friend's family? (And were they truly only friends as he had told me?)

I couldn't allow myself to get distracted.

"You don't know that you're better," I argued. "You just think you are because you were a soldier."

"That automatically makes me better," he said. "I've actually had to fight in battle, against more than one person who was actively trying to kill me."

"Well, if it would make you more comfortable, Dev and Niall and I can all spar with you, and we can all try to kill you, too."

(Dev and Niall had started another sparring bout nearby, giving us a bit more privacy.)

Salisbury laughed. It was a glorious sound. A little bit braying, but I'm not picky.

(At this point, I truly think Salisbury could have brayed at me like an actual jackass, and I'd still have swooned at him.)

I'm not sure what had become of the earl, presumably he had acquaintances somewhere abouts he'd joined while pawning Salisbury off on us. I wasn't particularly concerned with him, but fortunately for my pride's sake, he stayed scarce. It would have been significantly more embarrassing to flirt with Salisbury in front of his uncle.

I was going to do it anyway.

Salisbury was watching me with that quirk in his mouth again.

"Are we going to do this, or no? I thought you were the one accusing me of stalling?" I asked.

He blinked and straightened up, a hot blush staining his freckled cheeks. "Right. Yes. We should-we should spar."

"Have you ever done this before?"

He frowned at me like I was mad.

"I mean in this kind of setting. With amateurs and dueling sabres."

Salisbury let out another small chuckle, but this one was quieter, rueful. "Do I look like the sort of man who had a lot of spare time on his hands to spend studying the art of fencing?"

"I'm not sure what that means," I replied honestly. "You look perfectly healthy and vigorous."

 _To an obscene degree_ , though I kept that part to myself. For obvious reasons.

"I mean," he said, and he was starting to sound less playful and more frustrated. I did not like this turn at all. "I don't really fit in this place, do I?"

"Again, I'm not sure what makes you feel that way. Do you think I look around me at this sea of very white, very English men and think that I belong?"

"I suppose I can see that you'd feel that way," he allowed. "It's just…"

I was not willing to let that enticing beginning go without challenge, though I was afraid of scaring him off if I pushed too quickly. "Just what?" I asked, keeping my voice as soft and kind as possible.

He shrugged, and I was resigned to accept that it was all I was going to get. Still, he didn't move, didn't look back at me.

I waited. There was nothing else I could do. There were times to poke at Salisbury, to feint and test his defenses, but this was not one of those times. I had studied strategy enough over the years to understand that, and for once, I was going to actually attempt to be nice to him.

Finally, my patience was rewarded. His voice was even quieter than mine, and should have been impossible to hear over the sounds of the men around us grunting, clashing sabres, dancing around the floor, but I did hear it. Maybe because we were standing so close together (I might have moved closer bit by bit while he wasn't looking at me and I might not have even been conscious of the fact that I was doing it). Maybe because I was so attuned to him, so hung up on his every word.

"I just don't feel like I belong anywhere in this city. And every place I go, I'm reminded of that."

My next move had to be very carefully calculated. I took one step back and tapped him on the leg with the side of my blade. He startled a bit and looked over at me, but his expression was open and expectant, which assured me I hadn't scared him off. "If you think someone is going to see you here and think you don't belong, then there's only one way for you to prove to them that they're wrong."

"What if they're not wrong?"

I sighed. "You at least need to meet me halfway here, Salisbury."

"It's funny."

"What is?"

"The only time I actually feel like a Salisbury is when you call me that, but I've a feeling you initially intended it to mock me."

I had no notion of how to respond to that.

I dispatched with strategy and fell back on instinct. "Actually, I called you Captain to mock you. If you'll recall, you were introduced to me as Salisbury."

He finally met my eyes again.

 _Yes_ , I thought at him, _stay here with me, Salisbury. Right here with me._

"I've been introduced to everyone as Salisbury."

"You prefer to keep Snow?"

"My mother gave me that name."

"Did she? I thought your mother had given you Salisbury."

He shook his head. "No, I mean, my mother named me before she died. Simon Snow. That was the name she gave me. I suppose she thought I'd be using my father's surname."

The look on his face twisted quickly as he finished that sentence. He hadn't meant to stray into that painful territory again.

I had to venture carefully. "Do you think your mother would have wanted you to carry her family name?"

"I don't know anything about her," he admitted. "How can I know what she'd want?"

"Don't you think she would have wanted you to know her family?"

"She ran away from them."

"I ran away from my family," I said, recklessly. I really had abandoned all finesse now. "That doesn't mean that I don't love them or don't want anything to do with them. I just don't know how to be around them right now."

He tilted his head. "Why not?"

I breathed out a sigh. "Do you really continue to maintain that you don't know any of the gossip being spread about me around Town?"

He shook his head. "I really don't. I told you, I don't think it's any of my business."

"Well, take my word for it, then. Families are very complicated beasts. There is no simple answer. I think what you have to ask yourself is how _you_ feel, getting to know your mother's family."

"I-I don't know."

"Then you're hopeless," I declared. He let out a snort of a laugh. "Are you going to trounce me, or aren't you, Captain Snow?"

He continued to look at me, his smile getting wider as I flicked my hair out of my face and moved into _en garde_.

"You can't fence like that," he said.

"Can't I?"

"You aren't going to wear your mask?"

"Dev is hopeless and can't be relied upon to leave all of one's best features intact. Niall is better, but only by a bit. I trust you, Captain, not to mar my beautiful face."

There was also no way in Hell I was going to risk ruining my hair even more than I already had, or losing the ability to stare intensely into his eyes as we clashed swords.

I do not fool myself into believing that I will ever have a chance with the very lovely, very confused Captain, but I refuse to squander a single opportunity I'm granted to remind him what he is missing with me.

Because he's a tough Army Captain and a brute whose ego would never survive shewing any greater weakness than an academic dandy, he grunted in response to my explanation and tossed the mask he'd been given onto a nearby vacant chair. "Have it your way, Mr Pitch. But if I do mark up your face, you'll only have your own arrogance to blame."

"I'll have you know it's only arrogance if it's undeserved."

He flashed me another of those rueful, slightly puzzled smiles. "You're different today."

"Am I? How so?"

"You're barely bothering to insult me. I'd almost wonder if you liked me."

"Do no insult _me_ with such an egregious charge."

"Just shut up and get into position."

I sighed. "I _am_ in position. It is you who is not."

He made a great production of getting himself into his preferred _en garde_ , his sabre arm held up over his head in high _seconde_ , the blade running out almost parallel to the ground.

"Won't your arm tire?"

"You worry about your own arms."

It was a sound piece of advice, though he couldn't know I had already sparred two bouts before his arrival. Still, I was feeling fully restored from the break I had gotten during our conversation.

We squared off, stepping slowly, gauging one another.

He tapped his blade against mine, just a sort of friendly check, I think getting a sense for my reflexes and tension. "I can't believe you actually fight with these swords," he said. "They're so flimsy."

"They are perfectly balanced and well-crafted."

"Flimsy," he insisted. "I could handle two or three."

"I've barely seen you handle this one, Snow."

He huffed, but it was good-natured. "I'm a bit worried I'm going to kill you, or something."

"Don't flatter yourself."

He rolled his eyes. "I've not ever sparred with an amateur before."

"I'm certain you've sparred with men who have far less experience than I do."

"Different kinds of experience."

"Are you trying to back out? You say you're concerned for me, but maybe you're actually concerned for yourself and your ego. Maybe what you're really worried about is that I'll shew you up."

He grunted and swung in. I parried, but his blade wasn't where I'd expected it to be and I had to scramble a bit to block him and get in a cut of my own, which he parried with St George, and returned.

Of course, he would automatically go high when I had told him to leave my face alone.

"You're not slaying dragons, Salisbury," I muttered, disgruntled.

"Just trying to prove a point. I assumed you were trying to provoke me into an attack with all your heckling."

"Yes, well, it worked."

"I knew what you were doing, though."

"But you still attacked, so it still worked."

"Only because I _chose_ to do what you wanted."

"You still did it."

He growled. "You are impossible."

Impossible was perfectly acceptable, as long as it kept him growling at me like that.

I hopped forward, which almost always catches my opponents off guard, but Salisbury immediately swung his blade, catching mine and spinning it away from him. I was momentarily caught, his blade hooking mine forward, bringing us closer together than I was comfortable with.

(Don't mistake me, I was very, _very_ comfortable with it. But it didn't seem like a good idea.)

I grabbed his sabre and pushed my blade back off it, shuffling quickly out of range again.

He kept his arm down this time, his elbow tucked in and his blade in _tierce_ , his feet keeping up a constant dance.

He touched his point to mine and I snapped back on it a bit, following him as he led us in a circle, the sound of the blades scratching against each other our accompaniment while we breathed.

He gave another thrust, which was easily parried, then I riposted and he evaded, stepping in and back quickly, parrying my blade out of his path and coming in again for a touch, which I only narrowly avoided. It set me off balance, however, and if he hadn't reached out and grabbed me round the wrist, I would have collapsed onto my arse. (He was always getting me off balance.)

Once he had firm hold of me, and all my weight was relying on his grip (I suppose he really could handle more than a single dueling sabre), he winked at me and let go, sending me on my inevitable path downward. Then the cheeky rascal touched his sabre to my cheek (not enough to mark me, thank God, but it was his way of letting me know he _could_ ).

"All right there, _Baz_?"

I nearly lost my ability to think of any scathing rejoinders to that despicable display when I heard him use my nickname. Of course, I had told him he could, that disastrous night in Covent Garden. But he had never used the name until that moment. I can't say why he chose to grace me with the honour just then, but it only succeeded in setting me even more off balance. It is terribly undignified to strike a man when he's down.

"Starting to regret ever convincing you to stay," I responded.

He laughed.

I had never heard him laugh before today, but he seemed to be bubbling over with it. It was lovely. I wanted to capture that sound, and the light in his eyes, and the pink roguing his cheeks. I wanted to take them and keep them and pull them out in my worst moments. I couldn't have Salisbury himself, so I would have to settle for holding onto these small parts of him.

He offered me a hand. I sneered at it. "Do _not_ insult me by believing I would actually accept any help from you, you beast."

"You wanted to spar with me."

"I believe _you_ wanted to spar with me. You are the one who declared yourself challenger to the victor of my last bout."

"I couldn't possibly have known that victor would be you."

"Couldn't you have?"

He tapped his blade against the insole of my shoe. "Come on. Let's not waste the morning."

Salisbury was bouncing. This was the happiest, the most excited, the most lighthearted I had ever seen him.

It's no wonder Salisbury earned himself a commission. This was his natural state. He hadn't been designed for drawing rooms. (I had.)

I got myself reluctantly to my feet, trying not to think about the unfortunate state of my once pristine kid breeches. I resisted the urge to look, to attempt to brush off the worst of it. That would feel like capitulation, like an admission of my defeat. (Which he did not deserve.) (Even if he had winked at me.)

(I've been thinking about that bloody wink all afternoon.) ~~(I'll probably be thinking about all night, too.~~ But I absolutely should not have just written that out. Fuck.)

"Fine, Captain, if this is the way you spar, you had better watch yourself. I will not hold back out of anything like polite consideration for your fragile manly pride, or gentlemanly conventions."

"I should think it were your fragile manly pride and concern for gentlemanly conventions that landed you in your predicament," he returned smugly. "I have nothing to prove here, Pitch."

We resumed _en garde_ and began again.

I thrust first. "Is that why you're here, Captain? Come to fight amongst the amateurs to make yourself look good?"

The look on his face changed in an instant to something dark and closed off and I hated myself. I hated every word that had ever left my mouth.

He parried, riposted, and hit my ribs with a bit more force than necessary. "I told you that was none of your business. Why does it matter?"

I stepped back, but he didn't return to his starting position, stepping forward after me. I don't think he was being needlessly aggressive; he seemed distracted, likely by whatever my careless question had stirred up. His thoughts were somewhere else, his body moving of its own accord now.

I had lost him again and I needed to get him back.

I needed to focus on the bout. Salisbury had been the most present I'd ever seen him today. Matching swords brought him alive in a way nothing else did, if he is to be believed about his lack of all pastimes. If I was going to have a hope of getting his focus back on me, back in this moment, out of the clouds in his mind that were casting dark shadows over his brow, I had to give him reason to wake up.

I stopped moving back and charged forward instead, taking him fully by surprise with a lunge. He parried my assault, but I used my body to follow through with the momentum of my arm, spinning out of reach of a return attack, then rounding and squaring off again. I feinted _quatre_ , then swiped past his cheek (nearly the same place he had tapped me earlier), and stepped back again.

The whistle of the wind past his ear seemed to shake him and his eyes widened. "Shit, what do you think you're doing?"

Anger. Anger was very good. Anger was a strong emotion that he had focused completely on me.

"I thought you could take on three of me without breaking a sweat, Snow," I said, making my voice silken and affected. "You're starting to look a little sweaty."

"Yeah?" Was his eloquent response, which he followed up with a hop into my space and quick hit against my thigh.

"No hits below the hips," I told him. I hadn't even been properly guarding my legs because every imbecile knows you don't hit below the hips.

"What? Who says? Are you just making up your own rules now because you can't stand losing to me?"

I sneered, not even faking my own anger now. "I'm not making up rules, you oaf. Those are the actual rules. Everybody knows them. No hits below the hips."

"That's the stupidest thing I've ever heard," he insisted, lunging forward and jutting his chin out in the same movement. I barely parried, then riposted, which he parried. We grappled a bit. "You do realise that if you were actually fighting, your opponent won't give a fuck what you say are the rules. He'll cut you off below the knees and that'll be the last anyone knows you."

"Such a pleasant picture you've painted."

"You think it's a joke?"

"No."

"Of course you do. You think _I'm_ a bleeding joke. You've been tearing me down since you opened your mouth. I don't know what I was thinking in trying to win you over."

"What?"

Sadly, my eloquence had escaped me. So had my footing, and on his next lunge, the force of the hit (this one to my shoulder) sent me carreening backwards once more. He didn't wink at me this time. Didn't try to catch me, or cushion my fall, or offer to help me up.

I was tempted to stay down, but I needed to hear more. I needed to keep Salisbury talking and fighting. I needed to keep him here with me, even if it killed me. (Which didn't seem like such an exaggeration at the moment.)

"What do you mean?" I asked again, my voice breathless from my exertion and a bit higher than I am comfortable admitting. "You've been trying to win me over?"

 _Why?_ I wanted to scream. _Why on earth would you want to bother with someone like me?_

"I know I'm nobody," he said through his own laboured breathing.

I was still trying to get back onto my feet, but it was proving difficult because I couldn't tear my eyes away from his face and I kept getting distracted by the ferocity there.

"I know I don't mean anything, and I know I can't ever be like you, or like any of your grand friends. I never had money, or anything fancy. But that doesn't mean I don't have feelings and that I don't matter, you know? I just—I-I wanted—"

I got to my feet, swayed, steadied myself. "Wanted? What? What do you want, Snow?"

He shook his head, turning away from me.

Flying firmly in the face of the rules myself, I lunged forward and grabbed his sleeve, pulling him back around to look at me. I know I must have looked mad. I tried to make my voice gentle. "What do you want, Snow?"

His voice was very small and quiet as he said, "I don't know, Baz."

He shook his head, the smile that crossed his face a sad one. "I shouldn't have bothered you. This was stupid."

"No, it wasn't," I argued, my words coming out too quickly. "No, please. I want you to bother me. I mean, no. I." I sighed. "You see what a terrible influence you are on me, Salisbury?"

He huffed a very small, reluctant laugh.

"Don't go anywhere. You have to let me get in at least one touch on you before you slaughter me."

When it looked like he was going to attempt to flee again, I added, "you've already slaughtered my breeches."

I was willing to further sacrifice my dignity on the altar of his amusement. Anything to see that smile again, to hear that laugh.

Mother, I am sorry to tell you that your only son, the pride of your line, the very last of the Pitch heirs, is a pathetic wretch who has willingly traded his good name for a pair of blue eyes and broad shoulders. I trust you will break the news to our storied ancestors. If Salisbury has his way with my heart, I'll likely be seeing them all quite soon, and can make my apologies in person. (I'm not sorry, though.)

Salisbury did smile and he did laugh. "I don't know how you can move in breeches that snug," he said.

I told you this man will be the death of me.

"I move just fine, thank you," I sniffed, though I was regretting my decision to wear them, given the abuse they'd endured.

"You've impressive footwork," he said. "But you think too much."

"Fencing is a sport of strategy."

"Chess is strategy. Fencing is instinct."

"Fencing is an art form. It takes skill, real skill, honed over long hours of practise."

"Fencing is just warfare boiled down to figures in a book."

I suppose he wasn't wrong there, but that doesn't mean I had to admit that to his face.

"How would you know, Snow?" I asked, trying to get in around his impenetrable defenses. "You don't read books."

"And you," he grunted, repelling my attack by shoving me. (Who did this man think he was and why had he been allowed inside a civilised establishment like Angelo's?) "Wouldn't last two minutes against a real opponent."

"Come now, give yourself more credit than that. You're a real opponent."

"And how long did you last against me?"

Definitely not two minutes. I was doomed as soon as my eyes locked with his.

He didn't wait for an answer, and I didn't have one I was willing to share, just made a new assault.

He meant what he said, about instinct. I could watch it play out over his face, the clicks as each new move set itself up in his mind's eye a second before he reacted. He truly wasn't thinking at all. He was entirely in the moment. He was beautiful. Which was terrible news for me, because I was much too captivated by him to put any thought at all into my defence, to say nothing of an offence.

I did still manage to get in a few hits before Salisbury literally wiped the floor with me.

Once he got back into the right mindest, the banter evaporated, and he went lethally quiet. I say "lethally", because I imagine that's exactly what actually happens to Salisbury when he's in battle. He gets so far into the moment, so engrossed in the action, that his whole world narrows into the point of his blade, and there's nothing else but him and his opponent.

It was exhilarating being the object of that focus. I would have gone on forever like that if I could. Unfortunately, I am only human and my mortal coil was exhausted by the time he got me pinned up against a wall. I did my best to wrestle myself back out of his grip, but then we ended up on the ground, me on my back (again, of course), and him still pinning me with the blade edge of his sabre against my throat and a knee on my chest.

A drop of sweat fell from his brow onto my cheek. I wanted to lick it off.

Which was the second I realised I was going to be in an awkward position if I stayed like that any longer.

I scowled up at Salisbury. "If you're waiting for me to cry uncle, I'm not going to give you the satisfaction."

"What?" He asked. He was panting heavily, his hot breath hitting me with each wave. It was uncomfortably erotic. (The whole godforsaken exercise had been a very, very bad idea.)

"Get off me!"

"Oh," he came back to himself (and likely our surroundings) and immediately looked shamefaced. "Right. Sorry." He started to move off me, then offered me his hand. "S-sorry," he said, his voice softer.

"It's fine. Just remind me to send you the bill for my tailor. I am quite certain there will be no saving this shirt, now, either."

"Your shirt's fine," he said, looking it over and dusting off the front once, then blushing furiously and snatching his hand away. He looked down. "Sorry."

"I'll give you this, Salisbury, I can definitely see how you earned your commission."

"Y-yeah. Well. I-yeah."

Tongue-tied again.

Why was he so adorable? It was one thing for him to be handsome and another thing for him to be tantalizing. But adorable? That was the final straw.

I couldn't stand against adorable.

I wanted more than anything else in my entire life to take one step, shove my hands into his sweaty, matted curls, and kiss him.

And I absolutely couldn't do that.

So, I did what I always do.

I ran.

I've no defence. It's who I am. I am a runner. I run.

I can't even tell you what excuse I made him, or if I even said anything, before I slammed out the door without a single look back.

I was worried Salisbury would try to follow me this time. If he did, I don't know. My carriage was so close, I walked right to it without waiting for my groom to drive over. We were off in seconds.

I spent the drive cursing myself.

The moment I got home, I yanked off my accursed breeches, stripped down to nothing and tried to wash off everything that I could remember. Every single part of me Salisbury's eyes or blade or hands or knees or sweat (good Lord) had touched me.

I tried as hard I could to get him off of me, to get him out of me, to cleanse myself and my soul.

It did no good.

I'll never be rid of him. He's climbed inside and taken hold and left me to fester.

Left me with the hopeless knowledge that the only thing I have ever actually, truly wanted in this world is the one thing I will never get to have.

Because men like me, we don't get to have the things we want.

And I just want him.

I just—

I

I think I'm in love with him.


	5. A Full House

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Simon and the Salisburys are invited to stay at Pitch Manor, but Simon can't tell where he and Baz stand. Baz is the opposite of helpful.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Only one more chapter to go!!!
> 
> (It's weird writing two very different fics concurrently that are now both taking place in very different versions of Pitch Manor. LOL)

_6 April, 1810_  
_Pitch Manor_  
_Hampshire_

_Dear Penny,_

You'll never believe where I am. (All right, I know I just told you, but I still don't think you'll believe it.) (I certainly don't.)

I'll admit, after Baz fled the school of arms that day we sparred, and then Lady Ruth told me he'd left London entirely, I was convinced I'd been the one to scare him off.

It wasn't enough for him to run from the scene, he had to flee London!

But he'd been smiling at me. I think-I think we'd been sort of flirting.

I liked it. Being with him like that. Smiling at me, and laughing, and teasing me. Even when he was being an arsehole, it felt like something was different.

Maybe that was all in my head, because I was feeling differently about him. Like I couldn't get enough.

I couldn't take my eyes off him. Everything about him is always so precise, I would never have expected to find him with a sabre in hand, dealing out defeat to his comrades. His form was impeccable (of course it was), even if his instincts need work. He was beautiful, long and lean and hard and capable.

I stood and I watched and I wanted.

I wanted so desperately, in a way I don't think I've ever wanted before.

And then he took off his mask, his skin shiny and his cheeks flushed, and shook out his once perfectly contained hair. It hit against his cheek, fanned out around him, tumbled into thick waves down his throat and I wanted it to be my hands in his hair, my fingers running through those strands, feeling how soft and dense they were. I thought about how good it would feel to knot my hands in it. I wanted to dig in and pull. Wanted to watch his head tip back and his lips fall open and his neck arch and strain.

But he felt so out of my reach, untouchable.

And then I got too close, I showed him too much, I wanted too badly, and I frightened him off, just like I always do.

I'm used to Baz running, but I think a part of me always expected I'd see him again. A hope I'd despaired of when I found out he'd left Town.

When the invitation to Hampshire arrived, Lady Ruth acted as though she had always expected to receive one, but the invitation specifically named me as an invited guest, and I had no idea what to make of that turn of events.

I couldn't decide if Baz was only being polite and including me to keep from offending the Salisburys, or if he really wanted to see me again and his flight from London hadn't been precipitated by me after all. Which just made me feel foolish, because of course that was the case; I'm hardly important enough to dictate the movements of a man like Basilton Pitch. 

I just keep thinking back to that day, the way he looked at me—the way he watched me—the way he felt under me.

And then I tell myself I'm stupid. He was only watching me because we were sparring and I had the advantage of him. He wasn't looking at me any particular way. And it didn't matter how it felt to have my body that close to his, how it made me feel to see my sweat drip onto his face, because we'd never be that close again.

No matter what I told myself, though, when Lady Ruth shewed me the invitation, and I saw my name there, written out in a very elegant script (and wondered if it was his), I felt like something in me was restored.

Part of that I attributed to my loss of sleep. Since the day I last saw Baz, he's been featuring prominently in my dreams. Sometimes they're good dreams, confusing, but good. Sometimes, they're terrifying: the sabres are real, and we're not in a training academy, we're out on the battlefield, and Baz falls, and at first, I think it's the French who've done it, but then I realise it was me, and I've his blood all over me.

I wake up from both dreams out of breath and with a stomach full of dread.

And now I can't seem to bring myself to sleep at all, unable to confront whatever dreams await me tonight.

I really don't know what Lady Ruth was thinking in bringing me with her to this place. It's very large, but it's not nearly large enough to shield the entire household from my screaming in the middle of the night.

I was afraid of asking her about it. We haven't talked much on it since that first night.

She does still come into my room and sit with me. She doesn't pry. Just sits there with her cup of tea and talks to me, or lets me talk, or gives me quiet.

She told me once that her father had been a Navy man. I think she was trying to comfort me, but I'm not sure how. It was still good of her to try, I think.

She's been asking more and more about you, Pen.

We hadn't expected to leave London until at least mid-April, but I know you weren't planning to join us there, anyway. I think she's going to invite you to the Abbey this summer. I hope you come.

I'm not sure yet if I'm planning to stay with them. I had thought I'd be going back home when the season was ended, but I think Lady Ruth expects me to move into the Abbey with all of them. I don't know how the others feel about it, especially knowing how hard it is on the littluns with me in my fits.

Why couldn't you have come up to Town and helped me sort through all of this jumble in my head?

I felt like I was drowning tonight. I felt like I was going to be split apart, torn asunder on the rocks, dashed into oblivion.

I was fraying, unravelling, and then—then _he_ was there. And he held me together.

And then he ran away again.

And now I'm here, the threads of everything I ever was pooled around me like so much melted wax, trying to snuff me out.

I don't know where I go from here.

I really let myself believe that he wanted me as badly as I want him.

He was so different with me tonight. I let myself hope.

It was stupid, but it felt so perfect in the moment. I couldn't think about anything outside of him. My whole world narrowed to his voice, his face, his gentle hands on my hands, grounding me, keeping me solid, reminding me that I'm real, that I'm alive, that I'm a man. That he is, too.

Maybe Baz let himself get caught up, same as I did. He's been so hot and cold with me since we arrived, I've not been able to decide what are his feelings about my presence here. Tonight, he definitely felt hot. I felt hot. The whole world was cold and wet and we were safe, together, warm and dry.

I've been going back through the entire evening, back through the entire visit, scouring every look and word and action, trying to determine what is the truth, and what's been my own fancy.

I just don't see how I could have imagined that there was something between us. Something real and beautiful. Something new and terrifying. Something comforting and necessary.

We arrived to the manor four days ago and by then I had already driven myself thoroughly to distraction over Baz's very abrupt departure.

I don't think I'd have been quite so worked up over it if Lady Ruth hadn't looked and sounded like she was worried about him.

"I do hope it isn't any of this business with his father," she murmured, more to herself than to me.

I found myself opening my mouth to ask, but I closed it just as quickly. I would not betray Baz's trust by prying into his personal affairs after I'd told him I wouldn't. Instead, what I did say was, "I saw him the other week, when Lord Salisbury took me to the fencing school. He was there with his friends and they all appeared in good spirits. He didn't say anything about leaving Town so soon, though."

As we learnt later that day, Baz hadn't said anything about leaving Town to his friends, either. At least not the two he'd been with that day. They'd played cards with my uncle and had related everything they knew, which amounted to nothing.

Basilton Pitch had left London the same day I had last seem him under a cloud of mystery with barely a word to anyone.

I had convinced myself that night that I was the one who had chased him away.

I've been at a loss ever since.

I tried to tamp down my hopes for seeing him again, tried not to place too many expectations on the invitation to stay. I had only been invited because I was a member of the Salisburys' household (for now), and the Salisburys had been invited because they were intimates of the Pitch family, and Baz wasn't the one hosting the party, his father and step-mother were, and they'd invited several others down to stay.

I had no notion of what the company would look like, if I'd be in a sea of strangers, all of whom would be privy to my nightly fits. I had no notion what one is expected to do when one is invited to stay at a country estate for an unspecified amount of time. Would there be dinner parties, and dances, and shooting excursions? Was I going to be expected to hold a gun?

These anxieties were a strange kind of comfort to me, because they were familiar, and they helped me to take my mind off Baz as much as anything could.

Just the drive up from the road to the estate was nerve-wracking enough. It seemed to go on endlessly, and was obscured on either side with an arbour of truly massive trees.

When we did finally reach the end, and enter into the park, the manor itself was so immense, I almost couldn't take in all of it at once.

I won't bother with describing it here. I know the real you will want all the details, but all I really know is that there is no earthly reason I can fathom why any one family would ever have need of a house or a property so large.

Just the sight of it made me feel ill. This was Baz's world. This was his place, his home, his birthright.

The only things I have to my name are an Army commission I'm going to have to sell and a golden pocket watch gifted to me by a liar.

Just because I was riding in the Salisburys' carriage, didn't mean that I was one of them, or that I'd ever be given any part of their fortune. They didn't have any actual obligations toward me, and they could have opened the door, tossed me out onto the road, and ridden away without a single consequence, or claim that I could make on them.

And I didn't want one. I don't want to only have something because Lady Ruth decided to take pity on me and keep me around. I don't want the life Mr Davy planned for me. I don't want the Army. And I don't want this…this life of drawing rooms and country houses and handsome men with smart mouths and perfect hair and too many names and more money than the bloody King of England.

There was a whole troop of footmen standing outside the front of the house, just waiting for our carriage, in matched livery and white wigs. Lady Ruth keeps two footmen at the townhouse. I don't know how many there are at the Abbey, but I counted six outside Pitch Manor, and was left wondering if they had more inside that they were keeping back.

A pretty woman with ivory skin, soft brown hair, and teeth just a little too large for her mouth came down the stairs and immediately embraced Lady Salisbury. I wondered if they were school friends or something. Lady Salisbury looked younger than the other woman, but it was kind of hard to tell how old either one of them was.

They smiled and chattered to each other, and then Lord Salisbury shook the woman's hand. I was still handing Lady Ruth down, when I heard a horse being driven hard coming up behind me. I'm afraid I must have squeezed Lady Ruth's hand a bit too hard in my sudden fright.

"It's all right, my boy," she said to me, patting my arm as she took my elbow. "Just the young master."

I glanced over my shoulder and there he was, on a black steed that was huffing from the ruthless pace he'd set it. His look was impossible to read, alarm or anger or something else equally intense, and he didn't move for several heartbeats.

"Basilton," the woman, whom I assumed was Baz's step-mother, called over to him. "Do come and greet our guests."

He dismounted from his horse, took off his hat and gloves and strode over, looking the picture of dandified perfection, not a trace of whatever I had seen in his eyes when he'd been focused only on me.

Lord Salisbury gave his hand a firm shake and delivered a jovial chiding on Baz's abrupt departure from London.

Baz didn't offer anything more than a stiff smile in explanation. I don't think anyone else noticed his reserve, or else they were all experts at pretending nothing was amiss.

He played the perfect gentlemen to Lady Salisbury and Lady Ruth, and was politeness and good manners personified as he introduced me to Mrs Grimm, his step-mother.

But after that first tense moment when we locked eyes, he almost avoided looking in my direction entirely.

The message unmistakable. He didn't want me here and he wanted me to know it. I really had only been invited to appease the Salisburys, and it was much more likely Mrs Grimm had been the one to address the invitations, and no special care had been taken on the writing of my name.

I wanted to rage and scream. Not at him. At myself. For scaring him off in the first place, for ever letting myself be drawn in by him, for ignoring all of my own warnings about getting my hopes up. I had told myself so many times that I was nothing to him, that I didn't matter, and that nothing was going to come of this visit. That at best, I was only another guest.

Baz left us as soon as Mrs Grimm led us inside, presumably to take care of his horse, but as soon as he was gone, I felt myself missing him just as badly as I had after he'd left Town. It was ridiculous. We were going to be staying in the same house, eating at the same table, but the moment he was out of my sight, it started to feel like he might truly vanish this time, and I would really never see him again. And I just couldn't handle that. It made it hard to breathe, thinking that. It made me feel like my skin wasn't going to hold me together.

"Simon, are you quite well, my boy?" Lady Ruth asked me quietly. "You've gone quite red."

I nodded, but I didn't speak. I could feel my jaw was clenched a bit too tightly, and my breath had gone shallow and strained.

"Daphne, you don't mind if I take Simon through the grounds, do you?" She asked.

Mrs Grimm looked a bit surprised by the request, but smiled pleasantly and shook her head. "Oh, of course. Are you interested in horticulture, Captain Salisbury?"

"I think he's far more keen on fresh air," Lady Ruth smiled. "And impatient to stretch his legs after the journey. These young men can barely be held still, I'm afraid."

Mrs Grimm let out an airy laugh. "Perhaps that's Basilton's problem, too."

Lady Ruth led me through the lower floor of the manor and out another door into the sprawling grounds facing the rear of the property.

"Aren't you tired?" I tried to reason with her.

"You look as though you're going to collapse at any moment. What's wrong?"

"I don't know," I told her honestly.

"We'll walk then, and you can tell me what's plaguing you."

"I—"

"Don't deny it, Simon. You've been shockingly quiet and withdrawn of late, even for you."

When I didn't volunteer anything, she went on. "You don't have to tell me. I know you're still trying to decide what you think of me, and if you're going to trust me, and while I think that's fair, I do hope you know that you never need to feel scared of opening up to me. I'm not going to judge you. Being my grandson isn't a conditional arrangement."

Instead of telling her any of the thousand things floating around in my head, trying to find purchase, I asked her a question I hadn't had the courage to ask before. "What happened to my mother?"

Lady Ruth let out a very fraught sigh. "She fell in love with the wrong man. He was quite a radical, had earned a bit of a reputation for himself. Lucy found something to like in the ideals he advocated. Her father didn't. The two of them would get into such ugly arguments. I didn't know what to do. Neither one of them would hear reason on the matter, would try to find common ground, or agree to leave it alone for the sake of peace. I think Lucy blamed me as much as she did her father. Perhaps we both failed her. I don't think she would have found Mr Davy's charms quite so appealing that she would throw away her whole life for him, if she'd thought we would have supported her better. She was blinded by her love for him, but he was a vicious man. When…when she left…that was the very worst day of our lives. In my heart, I knew I'd never see her again. Your grandfather was so incensed, he almost refused to even raise a search. It was fruitless, in the end. He must have had friends up north—she didn't. Not that I know of.

"We were not shy of resources to keep up the search for some time, but once I received her letter, well. I reckon she was already gone."

"And so was he," I said.

She didn't need me to elaborate. "I comforted myself for a long time with the knowledge that she had written to me. That when she had been frightened and cut off from all of her friends, and certain in the knowledge that her days were…dwindling, she had reached out to me."

I don't think I'd seen Lady Ruth cry since the day she set eyes on me for the first time. She was doing her best not to cry just then, to spare my feelings.

"What was she like?"

"Oh, she was a fighter full of spirit and so much life, Simon. Just like you. She was a light in darkness and when she was taken from this world, everything went dim."

She stopped to clear her throat. "I wasn't nearly so broken when I lost your grandfather. I already felt quite numb. I've your uncle and aunt, of course, and your cousins. And I adore them all, they are the centre of my world. But finding you has given me back a part of myself that I never thought I'd get to have again. I don't mean to try to use you to assuage my guilt, or to rest my grief on your shoulders. You're your own person, and you've built a whole life without me in it. I can accept that. But I'd like the chance to get to know who _you_ are, my boy, and to love you for that person, and not the shadow of your mother. Don't forget, I lost you, too."

I stopped walking then, because I wasn't sure how to continue.

"Lady Ruth," I started, then found myself at a loss for words.

"Simon," she said, gently, grasping my arm more firmly. "Do you think you could find it in yourself to call me grandmother?"

"I don't think I can go back," I blurted out suddenly.

"Are you too tired? There's a bench ahead and we can—"

"To the Army. I don't think I can go back."

I'd been trying to get up the nerve to talk to Lady Ruth about my commission, but I was still shocked I'd done it.

I hadn't known that I'd made up my mind on the matter, until I opened my mouth and the words came out. I couldn't let her go on like that, telling me she was going to love me, and not knowing what I really was.

I just. I really felt like I'd gotten things sorted out, finally. I've been scrapping and clawing my whole life. Getting my commission felt like all of that fighting was finally giving me something for the trouble.

Maybe it was foolish for me to think that.

I used to walk along the river as a kid, when I was hiding out from the Miss and after I'd run away, and watch the birds. They'd get up so high, they'd catch some kind of a current, spread their wings out wide and just sort of float. I've always felt like I could never get myself up high enough to glide like that. I wished so badly that I could take off with them, fly away to some other place, some other life. Be free.

When I made captain, I really started to believe that I'd finally, finally, gotten enough wind under me to pull myself up, but most days, I'm still struggling under the weight of everything that's come before, and most nights, I feel like I'm in freefall.

London was a distraction. Baz was a distraction. But neither one of them did much good in keeping me afloat. That still takes all of my focus and all of my strength, and I don't know how much longer I'll be able to stay above the water. I already feel like I'm drowning.

"The Army knows it and I know it and I've been doing my best to try to hold things together, but I—"

It's a good thing Lady Ruth is as hardy as she is, because I'm a fairly solid man and in that moment, she was the only thing holding me up.

"Lady Ruth," a man's voice hailed her and I wanted to curl up and die because I knew that voice and I didn't think there was any force in the universe that could make me turn around just then to confront its owner. "Captain Snow."

God, why did his voice have to slide down my spine like that when I was in misery? Why did my name have to sound like silk in his mouth when I knew he only called me Captain Snow when he was trying to get under my skin? (He never had to try. He lived there.)

Why did he have to be here, now?

"Basilton," Lady Ruth called back. "I'm rather cross with you for leaving us without any word on your departure."

"Father finally summoned me home."

"That's no excuse for rudeness," she countered. She was talking to him over her shoulder. I still hadn't turned around. I couldn't bear to look at him just then. I didn't know what I'd do if I did. I already couldn't catch my breath. I was a bit afraid I was going to collapse.

"To be quite frank, I didn't particularly care to be followed."

Lady Ruth laughed. She didn't seem to take offence at his words, but maybe she didn't think they applied to her. They definitely applied to me.

I had tried to follow him, out of Angelo's. He was out of sight before I could catch him up, but I'm sure he knew I was there.

"It must be so trying, having people in one's life that care."

"It's exhausting."

"Were you riding alone?"

"Welby's still in Town a few days yet and Shepard's no taste for it. I can't abide him on a horse. He doesn't even post."

"Truly shocking," Lady Ruth rejoined. I couldn't understand how she was able to act like everything was fine and she hadn't just been on the verge of tears over her dead daughter. I was grateful, though, that she was giving me time to collect myself.

"Of course, we all know Salisbury here isn't much inclined. He prefers to do nothing at all times, it would seem. I've never known a man cagier about his pursuits."

I knew my refusal to even look his way was already well past rudeness, and was also quickly encroaching on cowardice. I gritted my teeth and let go of Lady Ruth's arm, turning round to face him. I had managed to school my expression, I think, and the tears that had been threatening were gone.

His hair and face were windswept, and the high colour in his cheeks hadn't faded. I'm not sure how anyone can look immaculate after a ride in the country, but I suppose that's just who Baz is. Even the wind and the dirt wouldn't dare to befoul his day.

I know I didn't imagine the way his gaze raked over me. He was probably picking out every one of my faults. He made me feel exposed. As desperate as I was for his attention, I was terrified of what he would see in me if he looked too closely.

"It would seem at long last I have my answer," he said, and there was something in his tone. I couldn't tell if it was meant to be teasing or malicious. "You must be a keen perambulator, Captain, or else a rabid gardening enthusiast."

"I thought he'd like to see the rose garden," Lady Ruth said. "My Lucy absolutely adored roses."

"Did she?" I asked. I had no notion why Lady Ruth was telling me something like that in front of Baz.

"Why don't you join us, Basilton?"

I could see the hesitation in his eyes, in his posture. I couldn't understand why he had gone out of his way to approach us if he was so reluctant to actually be near me. Surely he wasn't so mad to have Lady Ruth's company.

"It's been some time since I've paid a visit myself," he said.

That's how we wound up walking the garden path toward a pale enclosure that housed a hundred different varieties of roses, Lady Ruth between Baz and me, valiantly taking the lead of the conversation.

It wasn't until we were at the gate leading to the garden that I began to suspect Baz's reluctance to see it hadn't actually had anything to do with my presence. (Because of course it didn't. Because as I kept having to remind myself, I was nothing to him.)

There was a small, engraved plaque affixed to the gate.

_In Loving Memory_  
_Natasha Grimm-Pitch_  
_1761-1794_

 _Shit_ , I thought. This was some kind of memorial to Baz's dead mother. And I'd tried to twist his pain around to be about me. Because I was so obsessed with him.

That didn't change the fact that Lady Ruth must have known about the rose garden, and what it meant to Baz. So, why had this been the place she'd wanted us all to go? For acting so keen, all she did was take a seat under an arbour covered in some kind of climbing rose, and quietly observe her surroundings (and Baz and me).

I tried to sit with her, but she waved me away, leaving me with little choice but to walk with Baz.

Were we supposed to talk to each other? All I could seem to think about was his dead mother and mine. What kind of a conversation would that inspire?

Baz didn't seem to be inclined to be the one to break the incredibly uncomfortable silence. I wasn't much inclined, either, considering how awful I am with speaking at the best of times, let alone when I've only just managed to avoid another episode and been on the brink of openly sobbing in the middle of a hedgerow. But the silence was worse, in my opinion, than even my bumbling. So I took a deep breath and decided I'd try to play for lighthearted.

"I hadn't realised you'd be so humiliated by your defeat the other day that you'd have to flee Town under cover of night."

He let himself smile, just a little. "I really did leave because of my father."

"Why was he in such a hurry to have you back here?"

"Because this is my estate and he thinks I should be running it."

"I guess I can see that."

"Hmm."

"You don't want it?"

"It's not that."

"Then what is it?"

He turned his head to regard me for a few seconds, then turned away. "I'm not sure there's any way I can explain it that won't make me sound like a spoilt, ungrateful wretch."

"Oh, no, there definitely isn't."

That earned me a full smile and a shake of his head.

I bit my lip and bumped his arm with mine. "Tell me, Baz?"

His eyes widened and I could hear him swallow. 

Were we flirting again? I think I was, but I didn't know what was going through his head.

"If you must know, I don't have much of a mind for land management. I realise how important it is to maintain the estate, I do. But Father has never been at any pains to educate me in the business, and I've never been at pains to learn it. I-I wanted to be a scholar."

"Isn't that something you can do anyway? Penny would say that all you really need is a desire for knowledge."

"Penny again," he said. I couldn't read his tone.

"What?" I asked. "You don't think her opinion matters because she's a woman?"

I think that accusation startled him. He stopped walking and turned to look fully at me. "No, I never said that."

"But you've a problem with Penny. Whenever I mention her, you get all tetchy."

"I do not."

"You're being tetchy right now."

"Because you're flinging unsubstantiated charges at me and I'm trying to defend myself against the grave injustice."

"Why can't you be a scholar and run the family estate?"

"Because my father wants me here, in the country, under his watch, losing sleep over the price of pigs, and married to a nice, docile woman with ten children."

"Maybe you could negotiate it down to nine," I tried.

I hated thinking about Baz getting married. I thought about that night at dinner, with him and Miss Wellbelove sitting next to each other.

"What about Miss Wellbelove?" I asked, before my brain could stop the words from escaping my mouth.

Why had I asked that? I didn't really want an answer, did I? Because if he told me he was still in love with her, still pining after her…I didn't think I could handle that news on top of everything else weighing me down.

He sniffed. "I'm sure she'll recover someday from the crushing heartbreak."

"What do you mean?"

"If I tell you this, you can't tell anyone else."

I nodded. There was no question about it. I probably should have been embarrassed by how anxious I was for him to confide in me, but I felt fluttery inside at the thought that Baz was trusting me with something. And I needed to know his answer.

"Welby asked me to marry her. Not because she's in love with me, or anything ridiculous like that. But neither one of us has ever had any interest in it. Marriage, I mean. She proposed an arrangement. And then she thought better of it once she was out of danger of being engaged to someone else and dropped me."

"So, you're not in love with her?"

That earned me a laugh. "No, Snow, I'm not in love with Wellbelove."

"Oh, well, that's good then. I mean, because she threw you over. It's good that, you know, you're not in love with her."

"Father has different feelings on the matter."

"Why's he so determined for you to marry?"

"Isn't every father determined for his son to marry?"

I shrugged. "I don't know."

A shadow crossed his brow. "No, I suppose you wouldn't."

"Is being married some kind of provision in the estate, or something?"

"The Pitches were very, very concerned about keeping the family line alive."

"You say 'were', but aren't you one of them?"

"The last of them. And I'm not quite as obsessed."

"So, you have to carry on the family name?"

"No, but my father is insistent that I do. He said it would have been my mother's wish, the reason she passed her name to me, so that I could keep it alive for future generations of Pitches."

"That sounds like a heavy burden for one person."

"No one seemed to fuss overmuch when my aunt decided against marrying."

"You have an aunt?"

He nodded. "Disappointed in marriage by a wayward fiancé. Swore herself against any and all future marriagable endeavours. All the responsibility falls on me now."

"I thought your father was trying to disinherit you."

He raised his eyebrows and tilted his head to the side, a sly smile on his face. "Sorry, what was that, Captain? You said you'd heard something about me? I seem to recall you assuring me on multiple occasions that you don't pay attention to idle gossip."

"I-I mean. I don't. I didn't. I just-I think I heard something about it. Once. Before we met. I wasn't really paying attention. It was something Lady Ruth said."

 _Oh, Christ_ , I thought, _now I've dragged Lady Ruth into it_. "I mean! Sh-she wasn't gossiping about you. She wanted me to be informed about people. I really don't know what else she said."

"The Captain doth protest too much, methinks," was his only response at first.

"What?"

"Nothing," he said. "I'm just enjoying watching you bluster."

"I—"

"Don't injure yourself, Salisbury. If Lady Ruth is the one who told you I was being disinherited, then I know for a fact you weren't paying attention."

"Oh?"

"Lady Ruth is one of very few people who actually know the real story, and she wouldn't tell it, regardless."

"Oh."

"There has been a rather ugly rumour about me going around London this season. One piece of it is that my father means to give my birthright to my brother if I don't fall in line."

"You've a brother?"

"Yes. And three sisters."

"How old is he?"

"Eleven months."

"Months?"

He nodded.

"So your father wants to take your family estate and give it to a baby?"

"That's the word around Town."

"Is he going to?"

"My grandfather—my mother's father—was rather paranoid about the family property. He had only daughters, which made an entail impracticable. Instead, he made certain of provisions in my mother's settlement that all of the assets she brought into the marriage would be preserved for her use if she outlived my father, and then for her children, once she died. Since I'm her only son, all of that falls to me now. My father is likely to refuse me any of his estate, but I don't really have need of it, and I'd rather it go to my siblings, anyway."

"So, he can't actually do anything?"

"Apart from applying years' worth of guilt to manipulate me into doing what he wants? I don't know. My father and I have always been a mystery to each other. After my mother died, my aunt came to live with us and care for me. Father…I don't know who he was before. I was too young to remember, but I don't really know the man he is now, either. He's shewn very little interest in me all these years. I don't think his sudden concern is a product of any change on his part. He wants me where he can watch me, make sure I don't do anything to sully the family name."

I couldn't tell if he was being serious or sarcastic.

"I think he has been consulting with his estate manager and his solicitors."

"Really? Just because you won't marry?"

He bit his cheek. "Something like that."

"I don't get the real story?" I asked.

"No," was his immediate and surprisingly hard response.

"Oh, right. Yeah. Of course."

I turned away and started walking again. I couldn't explain my need to know his life, but I could at least avoid his gaze in the false hope that he wouldn't be able to see that need drawn plainly on my face.

He sighed. "Salisbury."

"It's fine, Mr Pitch."

"I've told you before to call me Baz."

"Why?"

"What?"

"Why do you want me to call you Baz? You don't seem to like me that much. I'm not really even sure what I'm doing here."

"I asked Mother to invite you."

That got me to turn around. "Did you?"

"You think that I don't want you here?"

"I don't know, Baz. I'm not really sure what you want. Every time I feel like maybe you're letting me in, you run away. And just now, I thought maybe we were finally going to be able to be open with each other, talk to each other about something real, and you just. You won't. And that's fine. You don't have to like me or anything, I just wish you'd figure it out. And let me know when you do. I'll leave you alone in the meantime."

I would have gone back to Lady Ruth then, would have actually gotten in the last word and run away from him for once, but then I felt a hand on my arm. It was there and then gone, but I caught sight of Baz's face in that instant. For just one second, there was something so raw and broken written across it, I caught my breath. "Baz."

His inscrutable mask was back in place, as if it had never left. His eyebrow lifted in that arch way he had, when he meant to be especially contemptuous. "You're right, Salisbury. I told you from the beginning, I'm not a nice person. You'd be much better off not bothering with me. Even my father knows that."

"That's not—"

"Ta." He touched the brim of his riding hat and sauntered off, stopping only to offer an affected bow in Lady Ruth's direction.

I just stood there, staring after him, wondering what had just happened. Wondering how we had strayed from one of the most honest conversations I'd ever had with the man to that fucking eyebrow again.

I just wanted to run him down and knock him over and make him explain himself. Make him apologise. Make him tell me if he ever thinks about me and feels hot all over and like he's going to explode if he can't touch me.

I wanted to. I didn't. I watched him go and I told myself to listen to him. I told myself that Baz was right; I was better off not bothering with him.

I told myself. I didn't listen.

I walked back over to Lady Ruth and offered her my arm and we headed back into the house in silence. She seemed to understand that it was what I needed. Every now and then, she'd reach over with her free hand and pat mine, where it held her elbow. I'm not sure what it meant, but I appreciated the gesture all the same.

Before we reached the house, and lost our privacy, I pulled us to a stop and walked around to face her. "May I ask you a question?"

She nodded. "Always, my boy."

"When you introduced me to Mr Pitch, you told me he'd be a good man for me to know. Why did you think so?"

"I've known Basilton his whole life. I knew his mother, too, before she died. I've watched him from the baby who was the pride of his whole line, to the small boy trying to understand why his mother had been taken away from him, to the fine young man he is now. I know he likes everyone to think he's impenetrable and unknowable, but I've always known exactly who he is. He's scared and he's lonely and he's in pain and after spending one day with you, Simon, I knew that the two of you would understand each other in a way no one else ever can."

"What?"

"I know your lives couldn't have been more different, but the experiences that shaped you have also led you both here. He's a good man, under that veneer of indifference, and I think you have a lot that you could learn from each other."

"Too bad he doesn't agree," I said, and stepped aside to allow her into the house.

I was half afraid she'd not let the subject close there, but Lady Ruth is good about knowing when I need my silence. I think that's one of the things I liked about her the most when we first met. She doesn't ever push me. I thought for a while that she was being cautious, because we were so new with each other, and that after a time, she'd reveal herself to be just the same as everyone else, always trying to put me into some kind of box. Lady Ruth, however, has never tried to make something out of me, or turn me into a person I'm not. She takes me as I am and doesn't blink. I think you're the only other person in the whole world who's ever seen me for who I am, Pen, and still loved me.

I thought...well, for a time, I thought, maybe Baz did, too. See me, I mean. Not love me. See me and still want to be my friend. It's just that every time I feel like we're on the edge of something, he pulls away and disappears, and it's hard not to take that sort of rejection personally.

Even if we are well-suited for each other, Baz already has plenty of friends. He doesn't need me. All I've got is you. Not that I mean you're not enough, Pen. You know I love you. God, I hope you know that. I don't think I've ever actually told you I have, have I? I should probably do that. Is that the sort of thing I can put in a letter? Or do I have to wait until I can tell you in person?

Anyway, what I was trying to say is that Baz's life is full of people who care about him, and who know who he really is. He has no need of me. No one does, not really. What good am I to anyone? The only good I ever did was join the Army. And I'm not even sure I can count that. Maybe I saved some lives, but I ended more. I didn't have the right to decide who should live and who should die. The French were never our enemies. They're just people. We're all just people. Only, now, a lot of them aren't anything anymore, because of me. And what good did that do? Perhaps I've never been any good. Maybe I was never supposed to fight for any better than what I had. Maybe I'm not worth anything more than begging. If killing people's the only thing I've got to show for my life, then that's probably the truth.

Maybe I never ran away from Mr Davy. Maybe I was just running away from my useless self.

I was so caught up in my thoughts, I didn't even hear the bell ring for dinner. It wasn't until Lord Salisbury poked his head into my room to see if I needed any help with anything that I realised it was already dinner time.

I felt so nervous, I didn't think there was any way I'd be able to eat.

I knew Baz would be there, and that he'd ignore me, or taunt me, or just sit there and stare at me and never say a single word and I didn't know how I'd stand that.

But it was worse than all that.

Baz's father was there, which I'd sort of forgotten about. Of course, he'd be at dinner, but I hadn't seen him or been introduced to him yet, and having him there at the head of the table was well intimidating.

His hair was all white and slicked back from his face, revealing a high, severe brow, hard eyes, and a patrician nose.

He didn't look all that much like his son, but I had assumed that Baz took more after his mother in looks. She was half-Egyptian, and I could trace her roots in all the lines of Baz's face. (They're perfect lines.)

I could hardly believe that Baz's step-mother, with her kind smile and warm manner was married to someone like Mr Grimm, and that she seemed to be happy about that.

None of the Grimm children are old enough to sit table with us. I couldn't help wondering about them, Baz's siblings. Did he like them? Did they get on? Did they look anything like him?

Shepard was there, but he was sitting too far away from me to have a conversation with. There were a few other guests, friends of Mrs Grimm, I think, but I don't remember anything about them.

I only had eyes for one person.

He didn't have eyes for me.

I kept expecting that every time I looked up, or glanced over, trying to be quick, or surreptitious about it, I'd catch him out watching me again. But I never did. Didn't even feel him look my way. The whole meal, he didn't turn, didn't direct a single glance or word in my direction. When his eyes swept the company, they passed right through me, like I wasn't even there.

It was the same that whole night, and all of the following day and at dinner.

I couldn't bear him pulling away from me again, but him pretending I didn't even exist was so much worse. It was like everything that had happened in the past three months was some mad dream. It was just like it had been after the ball, except even then, I got the sense that he did remember me, and was just choosing to pretend he didn't. He'd make pointed comments when we were near each other, to make sure I knew that he was cutting me out.

But this. Good God, this was so much worse. It felt like I had a weight on my chest that was being screwed down tighter and tighter and I was either going to pop, or lose my mind altogether.

I started to feel my eyes water it was so much work to hold it all back. I was shaking.

After the ladies removed to the drawing room, Mr Grimm gestured for Baz to move aside with him, for a private discussion, but it wasn't much relief. Just because he was busy elsewhere, didn't mean he wasn't still trying to cut me.

I just couldn't fathom why he was doing it.

Had I offended him that much in the garden? Was it something to do with his father? Did he just hate me now?

I got up from the table, making far too much noise and drawing all eyes to me (all eyes except for a pair of beautiful dark grey ones), and started pacing about. Lord Salisbury followed me and tried to engage me in conversation. He could tell how agitated I was getting, and I'm sure he feared I had a fit coming on. (He wasn't the only one.)

"Where did you and Mother wander off to so secretly yesterday?" He asked.

"Ah," I was struggling with finding my words. "Um. S-she—w-we went to the um. To the rose garden."

He offered me a kind smile. He really was trying. I probably needed to give the whole family more credit for dealing with me as patiently as they have. "Lucy was mad about roses. Did she tell you?"

I nodded, relieved that I could answer without having to speak.

He started going on about roses, then. I didn't try to follow. I don't think he expected me to. I think he was just talking to keep the sound of his voice in my mind. Maybe he thought it would help me, to know that I had someone there who was familiar to me.

I wasn't even bothering to respond, or nod along, or look at him.

The only thing I could focus on was Baz's back, turned resolutely to face me the entire time.

When Mr Grimm had finished whatever talk he'd wanted to have with his son, we were finally released.

Baz was the first one out of the room, and I hurried to catch him up in the short, narrow passage between the dining and drawing rooms. I tried to catch his arm, to catch his attention, but all he did was pull his arm sharply back and flash a grimace. He didn't spare me a look, didn't even break his stride. And then it was too late to try to say anything until everyone had gotten their fill of coffee and inane chatter.

I didn't take my customary place beside Lady Ruth, because I couldn't contain my energy to sit. I just sort of loomed in the corner, shifting from foot to foot. I'm sure the whole house thought I was a madman, but no one made any comments.

I wondered for a moment if Baz would play something again, but no one seemed inclined to have music. I tried not to feel disappointed. It's not as if he'd look up at me like he did last time and reach right into my very soul.

He lingered far too long, until he couldn't possibly put off retiring any longer. He did it on purpose, I knew, to avoid me. But he had underestimated my stubborness if he thought I was going to let him off so easily.

If he could bide his time, I could bide mine. I waited until I was certain that I could corner him without anyone else around to bother us.

I managed to catch him in the upstairs gallery, one hand firmly holding his arm, his back against the wall and some old lady's incensed portrait. "What do you think you're doing, Pitch?"

"Unhand me, you brute."

"Why? So you can run away again? I don't know what your problem is, but you owe me an apology. At the very least."

"Let. Go. Of. Me." His voice was low and there was a roar trembling under every word. I felt an echoing roar tremble deep in my gut.

_Fuck._

I was so wound up, I felt like I was going to cry. Or strangle him. Possibly both.

"Not until you tell me what you're playing at."

"I'm not _playing at_ anything. You're delusional, Salisbury."

"Don't you dare," I growled, "try to make me out like some kind of madman."

I saw it in his eyes, a tremor. A small crack in his shell, but he tried to brush it off. "You're certainly behaving like one. Where do you get off accosting me in my own home?"

"Where do you get off cutting me out like this?" My voice wobbled. I sounded plaintive. I'm sure he knew exactly how affected I was. How affected he had made me. I hated it. I hated _him_.

And I wanted him so badly.

This man who had been nothing but cold and cruel to me had started to shew me something of his real self and I was so hungry for it. What had I done to deserve this treatment from him?

"For fuck's sake, Salisbury, remove yourself from my person or I will remove you from this house without a moment's hesitation."

I eased off at that, but only a little. I didn't want him to call his footmen down on me or something. A confrontation wasn't liable to end well for any party. And I didn't want to hurt him. I just…I just wanted to make him _look at me_.

"Baz," I said. "Please. Please, just. Just tell me why you're doing this. I can't stand it. I can't stand seeing you there and not…" I swallowed. "Did I say something? Did I hurt you?"

He closed his eyes and let out a tired breath. I felt it wash over my face, I was so close to him. "You've not done anything, Snow. I'm trying to keep it that way."

"What?"

He raised his hands, taking my arms in his grip and pushing me gently off of him. I didn't protest. I felt weak. As soon as he had moved me back far enough, he stepped out from the wall and smoothed out his shirt and coat, smoothed down his hair. "I'm doing this for both our sakes. You'll have to trust me on that."

And I watched him walk down the hallway, eclipsed finally by the gloom of the evening.

I felt like my heart was going with him.

I ran after him, but he was gone before I could figure out which room was his. I couldn't exactly search them.

I stood there for several minutes before I finally gave up the hope that he would reappear. When I had managed to collect myself, I remembered that I was supposed to be in bed, not wandering the halls of someone else's house.

I went to my room, but I didn't go to bed.

I didn't dare to risk going into a panic and screaming the whole house awake. I tried sitting down to write to you, but I couldn't quiet my mind enough for that. I found that book you sent me, but I couldn't read, either. So, mostly, I just paced around and hoped that the floorboards didn't creak loud enough to wake up anyone else.

I'm not sure how I'd have explained what was going on in my head. I can't even explain to myself.

All I knew is that Baz was pulling away from me in a more decisive and permanent manner and I was apparently powerless to stop him. And that it hurt. It bloody well hurt to have him acting this way. To have him look me in the eyes and tell me that he was doing it to keep me from hurting him.

_God._

I don't know how I made it through the night.

I didn't wait past first light to fly from the house. I had no notion of the grounds, despite my walk with Lady Ruth. I'd not been paying any heed to the windings of the paths. I found the rose garden easily, but I couldn't bear to venture inside. An irrational part of my mind feared meeting Baz there (even though I was half-crazed to see him) and upsetting him even more than I already had.

I walked out farther toward a river flowing along what I assumed was the perimeter of the property. It was still distant, but I could see its winking glimmer in the early sunlight, trying to blind me to the beauties of the dawn. None of it held any interest for me.

It promised to be a clear and glorious day, but it could go to the devil for all the good it did my mood.

I just kept turning Baz's words over and over in my mind and internally tearing myself apart. He knew. It was the only explanation that made any sense. He knew that I was coming apart at my seams and he was afraid of what I would do to him when it happened.

I wanted to feel resentment at the injustice of his fear, but I couldn't. I had given him no reason to believe me capable of calm, civil manners. I had never been that man. And there was a part deep inside that scared me, urges I couldn't give name to, needs I couldn't bring into the light of this day.

Baz had every right to be terrified of me and I had no right to try to convince him otherwise.

I determined to keep my distance, for both of our sakes, just like he'd said.

I considered telling Lady Ruth that I was going to go home, but leaving felt like failure. Not with Baz, but with the Saliburys. When I thought about leaving, I got a bit heartsick. Lady Ruth wanted me to call her grandmother, and Lord Salisbury wanted me to call him uncle. They'd opened their home and their lives to me, included me in their circle, endured my fits, tried to offer me comfort and guidance. Lady Ruth had received the news that I was no longer fit to serve and she didn't judge me for it.

I couldn't just walk away from that. This was my one chance to have a family. Not the kind I have with you, of course, but some part of my own family, the one I should have had all along. And as broken as I am, I still thought that maybe I deserved to have that chance.

I wouldn't let whatever drama this was with Baz sully that. I wouldn't let my obsession with him rule my life. It was unhealthy and I needed to put an end to it.

The Wellbeloves were supposed to be arriving later that day, which meant Baz would probably be preoccupied with Miss Wellbelove. Maybe more of his friends would join us, too. The larger the party, the better.

I could avoid him, could avoid sleep, could avoid whatever I had to in order to stay here and make Lady Ruth happy. We couldn't be staying more than a week or so. After that, we could work out the details about the Abbey.

The important thing was just surviving the next several days.

The problem with this plan was that as soon as I was anywhere within Baz's vicinity, my awareness of him overwhelmed everything else. I did my very best to drive him from my mind, to ignore him the same way he ignored me, to look past him, to speak around him, to keep my distance, but in spite of the growing number of house guests each day, and our mutual goal of avoidance, we inevitably ended up in some awkward confrontation in the hallway at least once a day. A dance would then ensue, each of us trying to negotiate for one side or the other, dodging eye contact and offering half-mumbled excuses.

It would have been so easy to reach out and touch his arm, to pull him toward me, to brush his lips with mine, to feel his heart beat beneath my palm, to hear my name fall from his mouth on a sigh.

I knew where to find him if I wanted to. When he wasn't off riding with his friends, he was holed up in his library. He and his father seemed to have gone back to ignoring one another. Or perhaps he'd finally agreed to Mr Grimm's terms and now was simply waiting on a wife to fall into his lap. He would be short of prospects in the country, as most of his party were the same gentlemen he'd run with in Town, but a man like Basilton Pitch didn't need to do more than snap his fingers to get precisely what he wanted. Finding a wife would be no different, his failed engagement notwithstanding.

And then, sure enough, yesterday evening, a new prospect reared her head. The party had sat down to cards after dinner and Mr Grimm made a casual mention of some Miss Something with 40,000£ who was just out this season, and that he had been acquainted with her father at university.

"Not as well as Mr Grimm-Pitch was acquainted with his fellows at Oxford, eh?" I heard one of the gentlemen murmur to his neighbour. I didn't know them.

Without a single word, Baz threw down his cards, stood up, and stalked out.

"Basilton!" His father called after him. Mrs Grimm put a hand on her husband's arm and shook her head. He was about to offer a verbal protest when she called everyone's attention back to the game.

When I realised that they were all just going to go on like nothing had happened, I got up, too, and followed Baz out. I think Lady Ruth knew what I was about, but didn't attempt to stop me. I was half hoping, half dreading that she would.

She couldn't know all the complicated reasons that I wanted to go after Baz, in defiance of every oath I had sworn to myself to leave him alone.

But Baz was gone.

He must have run from the room to already have disappeared.

Was he afraid I was going to come after him?

Or had whatever happened at the card table upset him so greatly?

It was better this way. He was already hurting, that much had been evident by his ruthlessly controlled expression in the glimpse I'd had on his exit.

I still wandered around a bit, calling quietly for him. I checked in the library, and in the study, and in the gallery, and I'd even knocked on his bedroom door. (I had learnt where he slept, though the knowledge served only to torment me.)

If Baz was still in the house, I was out of ideas on where to search for him.

The evening was growing dark quickly, but this was his home, and he likely knew the grounds very well, even if he didn't have any interest in maintaining them himself.

I resolved not to worry.

It wasn't an easy resolution to keep when I returned to the drawing room, hoping to see that he'd returned and finding that he hadn't. It wasn't an easy resolution to keep when the company began retiring and he still hadn't turned up. It wasn't an easy resolution to keep when I lurked outside the drawing room and listened to Mrs Grimm tell her husband she was worried about Baz as they headed off to bed.

Mr Grimm said he'd likely "gone off to pout" but even his jaw was tight as he spoke.

"He's fragile right now," Mrs Grimm whispered. "He shouldn't be alone. And someone should have said something," she continued. And I got the feeling that by "someone" she meant Mr Grimm. "It's unconscionable that any guest of ours should speak about our son that way, and in our home, right in front of us and him."

"I'll talk to Stainton about it in the morning."

"You would have done better to talk to him about it tonight."

With that, Mrs Grimm withdrew her hand from his arm and walked on ahead.

"Listening in at keyholes?" Lady Ruth asked, coming up behind me.

I rubbed at my neck, guilty. "I-I'm a bit worried about Baz. I couldn't find him anywhere in the house. And it's late and it's dark and no one's even going to look for him."

"If I know Basilton, he's gone for a walk to clear his head and get some privacy. There's a folly near a little copse by the river. My guess is that's where you'll find him."

"Me?"

"You, Simon. And try not to stay out there too long. The weather's been turning fast all week."

I nodded.

She gave my hand a pat, smiled at me, and went off to bed.

I decided that I didn't have a choice but to do as she said.

It didn't take me long at all to spot the folly as I sneaked out of the house through the kitchen garden. I couldn't imagine what about that Stainton fellow's remark at the card table had shaken Baz so, but he was wont to flee at even the slightest provocation.

Up until this evening, I think I'd just assumed I was the only one who had that unfortunate effect upon him.

I could hear that little voice in my head telling me I was a fool for making myself out to be special to Baz. I had never been special to anyone.

Then I heard your voice, reminding me that sometimes my brain is wrong, and needlessly cruel, and that you love me. And then, for the very first time, I heard Lady Ruth's voice in my head, too, telling me that finding me gave her back a part of herself.

I guess that means I've decided to trust her.

The folly was farther from the house than I thought at first, and I found myself breaking into a run. It felt good, the night air whipping against my cheeks and through my hair, the way my muscles pulled under my skin. It's been a long time since I could just run like that.

I must have looked a sight when I reached the folly, my face lit up with a smile I didn't know how to control, and panting from the exertion.

Baz was there, just like Lady Ruth said he would be. He was sitting on a low bench that ran along the wall, reclined against the glass panes of a window, looking like something out of a very moody and dramatic painting, his coat gone, his cravat unwound and hanging limply round his neck, his collar open, his hair sweeping in thick waves all around his face, half of him in shadow, half in moonlight, his face etched with the pattern of the mullions in the glass. He was picking at the sill behind him with a fingernail, one long leg stretched on the floor in front of him, the other tucked up beneath him.

It was the most disheveled, most human, I've ever seen him.

He didn't look my way, but I knew he'd heard me, and could probably see me out of the corner of his eye. "Captain Snow," his voice carried to me, soft and deep and velvety.

"Baz, are you all right? I've been looking everywhere for you."

"Here I am."

"Baz."

He blinked and lifted his head to look at me. "You've called me Baz twice now."

"I'll do it a third time if you'll tell me what's going on with you."

He dropped his head back against the window frame, but he didn't turn away from me. He looked so tired. Almost as tired as I felt.

"I'm a disgrace," he said. "A fucking disgrace to my family and to my name and to the entire Kingdom, if you ask Stainton."

"I'm not asking Stainton.—The hell with Stainton.—I'm asking you."

He let out a defeated sigh and closed his eyes. I watched his chest rise and fall with his breath where it peeked from between the facings of his shirt. The gold had been leached out of him by the moonlight, and it made him look fragile, like he'd lost his strength and his life with his colour. I couldn't tell how pale he really was just then. Maybe he was ill.

"Something happened to me while I was at uni," he says. "With one of my professors."

This is not the start I thought I was going to get to this story. Lady Ruth had given me to think he was the kind of exemplary student as made everyone else hate him.

I moved slowly, quietly, cautiously, toward another bench nearer the door and seated myself there, to wait.

He was waiting, too. "You're not going to tell me you know this story?"

"I don't," I admitted with a shrug. "And even if I'd heard it, I'd still want to hear your version."

"I've always been very fond of academics. I took my studies very seriously. I had a reputation for being brilliant and ruthless, and I earned it. I made high marks, not friends. I'd started younger than most of my cohort and I was still shewing them up. Men in my position don't take kindly to being outclassed in any manner, so I became the target for ire and vitriol among my peers, but I was there to study, and that's what I did."

He paused, drew in a long breath. I waited. Where else did I have to go? I couldn't go to sleep, couldn't go to bed. This was the only place in the world I had to be.

"I had a professor, a young research fellow, who thought I was terribly brilliant and I ate up his attention because it flattered my ego. Also, he was lovely. We spent a good deal of time together, far more than we needed to, and other students began to notice. What I didn't know, that my academic rivals did, was that the man had a reputation of his own: that he had a penchant for seducing his students. I don't know if what they said about him was true, because I am proof that most of these sorts of rumours are slanderous and disgraceful, but the truth wasn't important. What mattered was that I had been known to be associating with him, and that everyone had something to gain if they could force me out. Thus began their brutal campaign of character assassination.

"It's possible I could have weathered it," he went on thoughtfully, "had I not been betrayed by my own desires. I had obtained some…illicit literature and ah, accompanying artwork. I went out one night with men I thought were my friends, and when I arrived back to my room, the books had been discovered, dismantled, and pages scattered all about to mock me. My _friends_ reported me and it was only my family name and a very tidy sum that got them to leave off anything more serious. I—I left. I ran off to London and I didn't look back. But everyone knew. Word spread, because I have always been the kind of man that others love to hate and they were enjoying my humiliation and fall from grace. So, there. Now you've the whole sordid tale, though I am almost sorry to say it gets no more salacious than that. At least when rumour spread, they made me out to be some sort of hedonistic reprobate who liked to play fancy man to his professors and his friends and whatever sort of fool would be the most demeaning."

I sat and I listened and I barely breathed. All the while Baz was talking, I didn't once feel like I was going to fracture or suffocate or go mad. I just wanted to be there, a steady presence in the face of his vulnerability. I knew how much it helped to have something like that.

I was a little confused at first, but once he mentioned the professor, and the illicit literature, well. I started to understand fairly quickly. Baz didn't deny any of it. I mean, I suppose he did deny the part about letting himself be seduced, but not the other part of it.

The part with illicit desires that had to be tucked away under a pillow.

I was still staring at him in silence long after he'd done. He grew impatient, and probably anxious, with my complete lack of a reaction and stood up. "Well, I'm sure you'd rather not be alone with me out here in the—"

I stood up, too, and grabbed his arm before he could get past me. I could feel his entire body tense up. Fear flashed in his eyes. He was terrified I was going to do something, hurt him. This is what I deserved after my shameful display at the fencing school, throwing him to the ground and pinning him with my sabre. After the opera. After the other night in the gallery…

"Baz. Don't—please. Don't go."

He lowered his eyebrows, regarding me with suspicion. "Why?"

I took a step toward him and I saw a muscle jump in his jaw.

"I'm not going to do anything," I told him, because I think he really was convinced I meant him harm. "I'm sorry, all right? I didn't mean to scare you off. I-I was having fun for the first time in I don't know how long, and I just got a bit swept up in it."

"What are you talking about?" He asked, his voice careful.

"Angelo's."

"Angelo's?"

"Yeah. I mean, I didn't know what to think when you ran off, but then I heard you'd left London without a word. I thought I must have—well, that you'd—oh, never mind. It was stupid."

"What did you think? That you'd bested me at sabres and I had to flee in shame?"

His tone was cold and mocking, but I could hear the raw edge under it, the soft and ragged underbelly he was trying to protect.

"Not quite," I hedged. "More like, I'd scared you or something. I didn't mean to. If I hurt you—"

"For fuck's sake, Salisbury."

"What?"

"Have you been paying any attention at all to a word I've said tonight?"

"I always pay attention to you, Baz. I thought that was painfully obvious."

"I—"

I was still holding his arm and he wasn't trying to pull it away anymore. I slid my fingers down along the fine bones in his wrist. I don't know where his coat had got to, but his cuffs were unbuttoned and his skin was cold but so soft under my fingers.

"Snow," he said, a sharper edge in his voice, a warning. But his breath wavered, betraying him.

"Baz, I—"

I let out a panicked cry in the very next breath. There was a bright burst of light and then noise all around me. My heart started racing and my chest felt constricted. I couldn't see, just flashing, and my eyes wouldn't focus.

The noise got louder and louder, it just kept on going, all around.

Suddenly, I was hitting the ground and when I blinked again, Baz was staring hard at me, his eyes wide and his expression full of confusion and worry. I think I'd pulled him down with me, we were lying on our sides, facing one another.

"What the fuck, Salisbury?" He moved to sit up.

"Baz!" I shouted back. "Baz!" I reached out and tried to yank him back to the ground. "Get down, it—"

"I'm sure we're not at risk of the lightning while we've a roof."

"What?" It was hard for me to focus on him. There was a heavy pounding in my ears.

"It's been raining since you shewed up."

I sat up, too, and looked around me, trying to orient myself. "Raining?"

I hadn't noticed rain. I hadn't noticed anything but him. "I thought—" I dragged a hand over my face. "Oh God. I thought—"

I let out a long and very unsteady breath. "I thought we were under fire."

"You pushed me to the ground," he said.

I looked up at him. "What?"

"We aren't under fire. It was thunder and lightning."

"It—"

"I think we're safe here. There's no reason to worry."

"Baz—"

Another series of flashes and long, rolls of thunder. I had to close my eyes. I pulled back, away from him, tucked my knees up, tried to hide my head under my arms, blot the world out.

 _Christ_ , I hated thunderstorms.

A tentative hand ventured along my shoulder.

"Are you all right?"

"Clearly not."

A soft laugh. "Would it be helpful if I tried to distract you?"

"Fuck, Baz. I can't—"

"Tell me about Penny."

That took me so by surprise that I raised my head just enough to get a look at him. "What?"

"Your friend, Penelope? The one who reads at you and lives in Watford. Tell me about her. How did you meet?"

"I-I—" I was still struggling to keep up. "She—well, her father's a curate. Or, well, he was. Vicar now. He took over the living when-when Mr Davy…"

Baz's hand was settled firmly on my shoulder and instead of making me feel trapped, it was more like he was keeping me still, letting me know that he was there, and I was there, and we were real and alive.

"So, you knew her father?"

I nodded.

"And he introduced you to Penny?"

"Mr Bunce helped with the running of the school."

There was another roll of thunder, and Baz must have known it was going to set me off again, because he let go of my shoulder and grabbed my face in his hands, over my ears, like he was trying to block out the noise.

Raising his voice to be heard over everything, he said. "Keep going. Tell me about Penny."

The way he said it, the way he looked at me, set something off inside of me. I felt…safe, I think. I'm not really sure I know what safe feels like.

"Her parents taught the lessons. A-and I always needed help. I'd sit extra lessons with Mr and Mrs Bunce, until I could catch the rest of the boys. I-I couldn't ever get my words out and Penny never shuts up." I laughed, thinking back to the time you and I used to spend together, you lecturing me on all the wisdom you'd acquired at age twelve.

"She thinks she knows everything and she won't hear a word otherwise. Being with Pen feels comfortable. It helped me. The Bunces—that's her family—wanted me to live with them, but Mr Davy didn't like the idea. I couldn't understand it. Now, I look back, I think he was jealous of me having another family. He didn't want me for a son, but he wouldn't let anyone else have me."

I still didn't know how to talk about him. His name still cut like knives in my mouth every time I tried to say it.

"You didn't know, then?" Baz asked.

"What?"

"You didn't know that he was your father?"

I shook my head. "Not until Lady Ruth came to collect me."

"That was…recent."

"Yeah, it's all happened very suddenly. I didn't even know he'd died till I got back from the war. Penelope didn't think it was right to tell me in a letter, when she knew I'd blame myself. She thought I'd do something foolish over it, like go off and get myself killed out of guilt."

"Why did she think you'd blame yourself? You were in another country. You couldn't have had anything to do with his death."

"No, but I'd broken with him before I left. I disobeyed him joining up. He didn't approve and I did it to spite him. He wanted me to go into Parliament and become some kind of great statesman. That was what he'd wanted for himself. He was frustrated and I was his son, so he decided he'd make me into the man he failed to be. But I couldn't be that man. I wanted to go and fight. When I joined the regiment, he told me I was a disappointment. He thought it was wrong, what we were doing. He supported France. He supported the revolution. A lot of what he said made sense, and for a long time, I really believed that he had the right idea. But in the end, he was a bitter, frustrated man who let his tiny platform skew his sense of reality."

I laughed, sounding pretty bitter myself. "Those are Penny's words, not mine. She never liked the way he treated me."

"What about Manchester?" He asked.

"What about it?"

"You were born there, were you not?"

I shrugged. "Dunno."

He groaned, wiping a hand over his face. "You were raised there?"

"I lived there," I qualified. I wouldn't credit anyone there with having a hand in raising me. "I got dropped off at the parish house with my name written on my arm and the blanket I was wrapped in and no other clue as to my origins. The Miss always said that my mother was dead, so I think I took her at her word, though I didn't trust her in anything else."

"How did you come to be in Mr Davy's school then?"

I dropped my arms and reached into my waistcoast, pulled out my pocket watch and handed it to him.

"What does this have to do with anything?"

"I'd run from the Miss as soon as I could. I was scrounging by the river when I saw one of the parish boys knock a man down and bloody his nose for that watch. Well, I didn't take kindly to that sort of behaviour, because it gave all us kids a bad name, didn't it? So, I ran him down, and learned him that I didn't let that sort of thing pass, and then I took the watch. I stared at it a long time before I brought it back to the man. He was sitting up on his own when I found him again, and I gave him the watch back, and helped him into the inn there. He asked me my name and I told him, because it wasn't much to me who knew. Then he bought me a pie and while I ate it, he told me about his school. I didn't much care what he had to say, but he was offering to take me with him and pay my keep. And the pie tasted awfully good.

"He'd go up from time to time and collect more 'unfortunates' from the parish house, then bring them down to his school. He was trying to create some kind of revolutionary educational movement. It never made much sense.

"Me and some other boys rode with him all the way. There were groups of us from all over. He used to call it his pilgrimage; he'd travel all over the country every year to recruit more."

I didn't tell Baz how Mr Davy used to call us his "chosen ones". How he only recruited foundlings from his parish friends because he had some kind of point to prove about potential but didn't want to bother with truly hopeless cases because they weren't worth the effort. That he used to talk about education like it was a holy war and we were its soldiers and that the only way we won was by a complete reformation of society, which in his mind meant bloody revolution. And that when I'd decided to become an actual soldier in the hopes of bettering my situation, he'd looked me in the eyes and told me I was a traitor to the cause and that he'd never been more disappointed in his entire life. 

The longer I've been out from under his influence, the time I spent in an actual war, the months I've had to grapple with his death, have shewn me a lot of things I was never able to see in him before. But the biggest factor was finding out that he was my father, and that there was next to no chance he hadn't known it the moment I'd told him my name, and he'd gone on lying to me about it for years. That he'd encouraged me to express my feelings about being abandoned by the people who were supposed to protect and care for me, and then using that as a metaphor for a government who refuses to care for its weakest members. That's the most I ever was to him: a metaphorical device.

There was another crash of thunder and I closed my eyes and put my hands over Baz's hands. "Stay with me, Salisbury. Tell me more about Penny."

"Penny," I said. I sounded so hollow. I felt hollow. I felt like I was just an empty frame, the winds blowing right through me, echoing in my abandoned chambers, knocking me around.

"She made you feel comfortable."

I tried to hold my focus. "Y-yeah. I—"

There was a burst of lightning so intense, I could see it through my eyelids. I could feel Baz moving closer to me, but I wasn't sure if I wanted him so much closer, or completely gone. I moved my fists over my eyes, bringing his hands with them.

"Penny likes to read, doesn't she?" Baz asked, and his voice was so soft, but it still broke through the chaos in my mind.

I nodded.

"She reads to you."

Another nod.

"What sort of books does she like? Novels? Moral treatises? Philosophical meditations? Drama? Poetry? Scientific theory? Other peoples' diaries?"

I let out a breath of a laugh.

"I can go on all night if I have to."

"I could listen to you go on all night," I admitted, and then immediately knew it was a mistake.

"Could you?" He asked, and there was a bit of a husk in his voice that hadn't been there before.

His fingers brushed over the backs of my hands, tucked themselves into my fists, pulled them away from my eyes.

"What sort of stories do you like to hear?" He asked, running his thumbs over my hands again and again.

"Penny likes all sorts of books," I said, instead of answering his last question. "Literature, science, history. She'll read anything."

"What does she read to you?"

"All of it. Any of it. Whatever she's got in front of her that she wants to share. Politics, mostly. Religion. Tried to shew me all the ways that Mr Davy was wrong, I think."

"I think I'd like to meet her," he said, and it startled me.

"You would?"

"Is that so unfathomable?"

"I just—" I shrugged. "I don't know. I-well, until very lately this evening, I thought you'd done with me. I thought you hated me, actually."

"I don't hate you."

"You sure do a shit job of shewing someone you like them, then."

He smiled, a little sadly. "No. Just you."

"Lucky I could have the privilege."

"I do owe you an apology," he said with a sigh. "You're right about that. I've not been fair to you. In my defence, I've been trying to keep my distance so as not to taint you."

"That's bollocks."

"It's not bollocks," he huffed. "I told you what everyone thinks of me. How do you think my reputation will reflect upon you, Captain, if I let you any closer than you already are?"

"Why the hell should I care?"

"Because I'm a fucking sodomite and that's the sort of thing they hang men for!"

I leant back, and I'm pretty sure he thought I was going to run, but he'd shocked me. Not by his admission (I've slept in enough Army encampments in my life not to be shocked by anything like that), but by his change in demeanour. He'd been so careful, so gentle before. I think he was trying to scare me off. It wasn't going to work. Maybe I couldn't sit through a thunderstorm without going into a fit of nerves, but the only thing that scared me about Baz was losing him.

"I've also had it on good authority it's the sort of thing they send a soul to Hell for."

"I've been to Hell, Baz."

His grey eyes found mine in the moonlight and held me in place, pierced me right through.

"I'm still there," I admitted, and my voice was shaking a bit. "Every second of every day, when I let my guard down. Sometimes, even when I don't. Awake, asleep, it doesn't matter. I can't break free of it. I'm just this now."

I nodded down at my body. "Just a shaking husk of something that used to be a hero. I've nothing to my name—I've barely a name—but the thing that made me this way. And I've got to give it back."

"What?" He asked.

"My commission," I said. "I can't go back. I can't serve. I'm a fucking wreck. I've already told Lady Ruth. I'm selling out."

"The Army can put you on half-pay."

"I'm not even half-good to them. Least if I was injured, they'd still be able to get some use out of me. I'm no use to anyone in my state."

"I wouldn't say that."

"What would you say, then?"

"I would say…"

His face was so open, so vulnerable. I could see his whole heart in his eyes. God, he was beautiful. Broken down like this into his parts, not all tied up and pristine. Tired. Messy. Sad. Full of hurt and rage and fear.

I didn't know I was leaning in until the tip of my nose touched his. (It's too long for his face, and it's a little bent towards the bottom.) (I like that.) I paused, found his gaze, nuzzled him just a bit, heard his sharp intake of breath.

I let my eyes fall closed.

And then he ran.


	6. Up the Garden Path

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Baz finally has a talk with Malcolm about his situation and there's another ball, because I had to bring everything full circle. :)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, here we are, the last chapter. I am trying not to think about this being the last chapter because this fic has been such a journey for me. I'm really proud of it and excited and nervous to post this last part and then actually be done.
> 
> I will still return at some point to do some artwork, but at least not until after the Countdown.
> 
> I want to say a HUGE thank you to all the very wonderful people who have been cheering me on and commenting and rec'ing the fic and hopping into my DMs to send me love. You have made this such a lovely experience. So thank you thank you thank you!
> 
> Also, one last shout out to Bazzybelle for organizing the first ever COTTA event and being completely amazing! <3<3<3<3
> 
> Also, while I'm writing notes, quick word on this chapter. It's going to look a bit different than the other chapters. I changed things up with the letters, so this will be in mostly italics. I really hope that's not a problem for anyone to read. If it is, shoot me a message and I'll come back and change.

_My Dearest Simon,_

_It's been three days since I ran from you._

_Three days of self-flagellation and doubt._

_Three days of regret, of what-ifs. Of seeing you there, within my grasp (me within your grasp). Of reliving every moment, sometimes through my eyes, sometimes through yours, and wishing more than anything that I had chosen differently._

_But how could I?_

_We can't have this. I've always known it, even when there was no_ this _to have. (Who do I think I'm fooling? There has always and only ever been this.)_

_I thought Oxford had ruined me. I was wrong._

_You've ruined me. You and that smile and your curls and those fucking shoulders and your hands on my lapels and my hands over your ears and my name in your mouth and your mouth—_

_God, Simon, your mouth._

_Your mouth on mine, where it belongs. Where you belong, where I do._

_I don't know if you slept. I didn't. I haven't._

_I was sick at the thought that I left you there, alone, in that storm, in the dark._

_I was afraid for you._

_I knew you would blame me, I hoped that you would. It is my fault. You needed my support but all you got instead was my cowardice._

_I don't know how to be around you without loving you. Without wanting you. You don't want this, Simon. You don't need it. Your life is already in upheaval. I have no right to place my needs on your shoulders, no matter how broad they may be._

_I spent the night pacing in my room, convinced that I had finally succeeded in killing my happiness. I had expected it. I've never believed I deserved happiness._

_You, Simon, would make me happy. You would make me so happy._

_I know you can't see your own worth, that you have learnt to measure your value only through the eyes of those who have abandoned and exploited you. We are taught from our first days that our worth lies in the things we cannot control: our names; our families; our fortunes. Everything I have and never did a single thing to earn. You were made to think that you didn't matter because your material worth has never matched your moral worth. And the world went along in the injustice._

_You have fought your way to earn every scrap begrudgingly given and still you cannot see your value, your strength. I have never worked for anything, and still you look at me like I could ever deserve your affection._

_The world has been cruel to you, Simon, and I am a cruel man. You cannot truly want what I offer, which is little more than a rope around your lovely throat._

_My aunt Fiona would mock me for being overdramatic, but I've no reason to believe I will be offered more than one reprieve. I've done nothing to earn it._

_It broke my heart to flee from you yet again, but it would break all of me and more to lose you in that way._

_If life has shewn you anything, it has shewn you that it has no mercy._

_A mother full of love taken too soon._

_A neglectful father raising an army of children instead of a son._

_A valuable commission bestowed for the very heroics that left your nerves in a state unfit to execute your new duties._

_A family recovered too late to deliver the succour so needed in your most vulnerable years._

_A man who loves you more than his own life, but not more than yours._

_Will you ever be able to think of me without that hot, sharp anger that simmers just below your skin? I have felt its burn and sting._

_I don't know if you'll ever forgive me, but I don't think I'll ever forgive myself. I knew better. I tried to be stronger than this. I tried to stay away from you (I tried to run away from you), but I've never been that strong. You're more than I can stand against. You're everything._

_You drew me in and I went, willingly. I knew I'd be burned and I went anyway, because I wanted to. I wanted you. You're a good man, Simon. I know you probably can't see it, but you are. Far better a man than I've ever known._

_I know our time is drawing short and I will have to let you go, but I will always be grateful for the little we got to have. It's more than I ever let myself hope for. And I'd like to end it this way, never having known more. I can't put myself through losing you if I actually know what I'm losing._

_I suppose that's the way it's always been for me. I lost my mother before I had a chance to know who she was. I lost my father that same day. The man who's left is still a stranger to me and probably always will be. If he let me in, he'd have to let in all the parts of me I got from my mother, but more than that, all the parts of me I got from him. Malcolm Grimm isn't equipped to look into a mirror and meet himself. He'd have to confront his mortality. Men like him can't afford to acknowledge their humanity; it makes them weak._

_I am that weakness personified: all the love he had for my mother; all the hope they placed in me for the preservation of the family; all the pain he felt in her loss; all the ways he's failed me as a father; all the ways I've failed him as a son._

_This is why we've both been content to ignore each other all these years. We can't face what we see in the other._

_And now that mutually beneficial avoidance has come to an end. I don't fool myself in believing that Father called me home because he has any genuine interest in my life, beyond the ways in which my behaviour reflects—poorly—upon him._

_If he thinks that I will be swayed to compromise myself by a mere 40,000£, he certainly does have a very low opinion of me indeed. Not only would it be unfair to me, it would be quite cruel to the unsuspecting miss to relegate her into a misery of resentment and neglect._

_It would have been different with Welby, of course. She has never suffered under any illusions as to the kind of man I am. (I have.) It would certainly have made both of our situations easier to weather, but I admire her strength in rejecting that route, even if I know it now leaves me in an even more precarious position._

_Which is a terrible place to be in when one is summoned into Malcolm Grimm's study after his solicitor has just departed._

_I didn't know where you were today. I didn't see you at breakfast, and when I looked for you on the grounds, you evaded my every assay. I was tempted to ask Dame Salisbury if you had left altogether, but the chances of receiving an affirmative for my trouble were too high to confront._

_Simon, if you had left me without one final chance to drink in the sight of you, and bask in the gentle rumble of your voice, I should have considered it the greatest tragedy of my life. (Second only to flying from your embrace.)_

_I should have hunted you down just so that I could have one more glimpse with which to torment myself to the end of my useless days. (I wouldn't let you see me.) (I wouldn't want to cause you any more pain.)_

_I wished that I could have had you at my side in that moment._

_"Come." Was the peremptory reply to my knock on Father's door._

_I refused to be timid in my approach—best never to shew fear. Keeping my chin high and my shoulders solidly behind me, I strode into my father's study. He was, thankfully, alone._

_"You've put me into quite a bind, Basilton," he began, without even bothering to look up at me. He was writing something into a ledger, but I couldn't make it out. I didn't feel inclined to dedicate much effort to the task: either it would involve me, in which case, I didn't want to know; or it wouldn't involve me, in which case, I didn't care to know. "Have you any notion how much trouble I've been to ever since this business at Oxford?"_

__Oh, God. _This was worse than Miss 40,000£. Much, much worse. I thought we had an unspoken agreement that neither one of us would ever touch on Oxford. Ever._

_"No, sir," was the most intelligent answer I could make as I sat down in the chair facing his desk. My voice sounded far meeker than I had intended._ Damn it. __

_"I had a mind to bring you home from London immediately, but your mother convinced me that it was better for everyone if you were seen to be enjoying yourself. Hiding would have made you look guilty. Of course, I would have liked to believe that you would feel some modicum of shame, but that was hoping too much."_

_"If mother thought it best for me to stay in London, then why did you send for me? Sir." I added, just in case, and then hated myself for it._

_His jaw muscle twitched. "I had it from Stainton that you were failing to deport yourself with anything remotely resembling discretion and I needed to see it for myself. And avoid you causing further damage."_

_Stainton, again. Bloody, fucking Philip Stainton. It was his son that had orchestrated the masterplot to expose me. What gives them the right to think they know anything about me?_

_"I don't follow."_

_"You and the captain."_

Fuck me.

_"The captain?"_

_He closed his eyes and dropped his head. "I have lost all of my patience. I thought you were smarter than this, Basilton. That intrigue with the research fellow. Keeping that sort of filth in your room, where anyone could find it. Running around with this Salisbury, meeting in dark theatre corridors and…" he had trouble with this next word, "_ flirting _brazenly in the fencing school in the middle of the day. What were you thinking?"_

_"I don't understand. If you thought I was…carrying on with Salisbury, why did you let me invite him?"_

_"I didn't. That was all your mother and Lady Ruth's doing."_

_"Why did mother allow it?"_

_"She seemed to think I was being unreasonable in passing judgment based on Stainton's word alone."_

_"Have I done or said anything in the time Salisbury has been staying here that has led you to make this accusation?"_

_"To be frank, it's everything you haven't done."_

_"What?"_

_"You never look his way, or speak to him. I would have believed that the whole thing was fabricated in an effort to make us look like fools, except that Captain Salisbury definitely looks as though he knows you, Basilton. He can't seem to keep his eyes off of you for a whole minute."_

_"I-I can hardly be held responsible for another man's actions. I cannot control who the captain chooses to look at."_

_"The captain is just the sort of opportunistic sort to attempt something and then entrap you for a fortune in order to save your hide."_

_"What?" I was absolutely horrified at his implication and utterly incensed on your behalf. "Salisbury is the last man alive who would hatch a scheme to extort money out of me—out of anyone. He is the most decent—"_

_"Are you having an affair with him?"_

_"How can you ask me that?"_

_"I am your father."_

_I felt like I was burning alive from the inside. Maybe I would turn to ash, maybe I would rise anew. All I could think of was you. Perhaps Shepard doesn't have faith in me to defend anyone's honour, but by God, I was going to defend you. And I was going to defend myself, because you see something in me, Simon. You see me for who I am and still you want me. You want to fight for me. You want me to be better, and I want to be better. For you. You make me want to be better._

_"What I do in my private life is none of your business. I don't owe you or anyone else an accounting. And Salisbury owes you nothing. He risked his life to fight a war he didn't believe in so that you and I could rest assured no one less fortunate than us would get the wrong idea about who should be in power."_

_"You will not speak this way in my house—"_

_"This is_ my _house. Has been since February and I've generously allowed you to continue occupying it without calling into question the changes you've made or the expenses you've incurred."_

_"I have been doing everything in my power to keep the estate running while you caper about London embarrassing the whole family. What you do reflects on all of us."_

_"You mean, it reflects on you."_

_"I mean it reflects on all of us. If you won't spare a thought for your own neck or your mother's feelings, think of your sisters. Think of how this will affect them. Your willfulness will ruin more than just your life. I had thought better of you."_

_"If you think my presence here is damaging to my sisters, then you should have left me alone in London, or else removed yourselves from my property. Perhaps you had better do, if you're so afraid of me."_

_"She would be so ashamed of you."_

_Ah, yes. There it was. I had been wondering how long it would take him to invoke the mythical_ She _of my childhood, who was always there to remind me of all the ways I had failed._

_Would she have been that kind of mother? Is that what I missed? A lifetime of always falling short of the mark. A ledger that has only my faults in its accounting, to shew me how far into debt I have fallen._

_The tragedy of it is that I'll just never know._

_But Father knows. He knows exactly what kind of woman she was. Perhaps he was right, and she would have been disappointed. Perhaps he was wrong, and he was using the idea of my mother to manipulate me into doing what he wanted._

_If you were able to face down your father—the man who had held your fate in his hands and educated and conditioned you—and stand firm against his disappointment and strike out on your own path, then I, who has far less to lose, had no excuse but to take strength from you and refuse to cower before a woman who likely only ever existed in Father's mind._

_"She's dead," I said. I'm not sure which one of us was more surprised. "And I can't live my whole life trying to fill the impossible expectations of a ghost! Nothing I have ever done has been good enough. I have never—never—stepped the slightest bit out of line. Do you know how difficult it was to carry the burden of this fucking name my whole life? The great scion of the Pitch house. The last hope for his line. It's just a name. It doesn't mean anything. I'm all there is that's left of it. And I'm tired. I'm just. So. Tired. Maybe Mother would be ashamed of me, I'll never know. But you're still here. And if you have something to say to me, I wish you'd just have the courage to say it yourself instead of hiding behind the imagined sentiments of your dead wife. What will it be, Father? Is this the day we're going to be honest with each other?"_

_He was quiet for a very long moment. I didn't know what to make of the silence. Father has never been noted for his garrulousness, but I thought that speech was worthy of some response._

_I couldn't help wondering what you would have thought, Simon, if you had been there to hear it. (I wanted you there so badly. For entirely selfish reasons, of course.)_

_I had watched Father's emotions unfolding on his face as I spoke. Shocked, incensed, even betrayed, to something far less certain, something unidentifiable. Not an expression I had seen on Father's face before, and not much I had to compare it to._

_"Basilton," he finally said, speaking on a sigh. "I have always been proud of you."_

_It would have been nice if he had ever thought to mention it before. I suppose I should simply be content that he said it at all._

_"I am still proud of you. I know that you've never had much interest in the estate management and perhaps some of the blame lies with me in never insisting on it when you were younger. I don't object to you wishing to prioritise your academics. I don't object to you running about London with your friends. But when it comes to the matter of your discretion—"_

_"How have I been indiscreet? I haven't actually done anything to be indiscreet about."_

_He was so taken aback by that statement, he sat back in his chair, as if he were feeling the impact of my words hitting against him._

_"I don't want to hear—"_

_I didn't want to hear. I didn't want to hear whatever the next words out of his mouth were going to be. I didn't want to hear what accusations he was going to lay at my feet. I didn't want to hear what new scandals I had stirred up while in Town, or brooding in the folly, or God knows where else._

_"Nothing happened at Oxford," I told him. "Nothing happened in London. Nothing happened here. And nothing happened with Philip Stainton, though it wasn't for his lack of trying, or were you not aware that he's had it out to ruin my life since I rebuffed his advances at Harrow? Perhaps you should ask his father about that. Something tells me Junior never passed on that lurid little tidbit."_

_I don't think I had ever before seen my father's face turn such a florid shade as I did at that moment._

_"This has nothing to do with Philip Stainton. He was only one of any hundreds of people who saw you together with Salisbury in London."_

_"Salisbury and I met on a handful of occasions quite by accident. None of our interactions lasted longer than a couple of minutes, save for when we sparred with each other at Angelo's, which is something I and every other man there have done countless times quite innocently with any number of opponents. Would you have had me ignore the captain and risk offending him and his family? Or should I have cut them all the moment we met under the assumption that someone would see the two of us standing in the same room and draw erroneous conclusions about our relationship? Please, tell me, Father, what I am to have done differently."_

_"I do not appreciate your tone, Basilton."_

_"I do not appreciate yours. Tell me what I have done to deserve your censure and I will apologise for it, but until you can do that, I think it is you who should be apologising to me. And, moreover, to Captain Salisbury, who has been completely innocent in this matter."_

_God, it felt good._

_For the first time in perhaps my entire life, I held the moral highground. I knew that I was in the right, no matter what were my actual desires. More than that, Simon, I had your name to defend. And I will defend it. I will not allow anyone to speak poorly of you. I will not allow the name you have done so much to distinguish be slandered through no fault of your own._

_You deserve more than that. You deserve to have your name adorned with laurels. You deserve to have odes written to you. Sonnets. Symphonies._

_My father had no notion how to respond to me, how to deal with me. I had never spoken back to him before. I had never contradicted him or raised my voice. He was ill equipped for our confrontation to be two-sided and he was visibly struggling with how to handle my challenge._

_After several very tense minutes of silence simmering between us, he dropped his head and let out a long, shaky breath. Still, he didn't speak. He planted his palms on his desk, pushed back his chair, stood, and strode over to me. Then, he laid his hand on my shoulder._

_I couldn't recall the last time he had extended something like a fatherly gesture to me. Suddenly, it was I who was at a loss. I looked up at him, exceedingly uncomfortable with the height difference._

_"I'm sorry, Basilton," he said, and I nearly lost consciousness from the shock of it. Had my father just told me he was proud of me and apologised to me on the same day? Maybe I had already lost consciousness. Maybe I was dead. "Perhaps I have been unfair."_

_I wanted to shout back_ perhaps _? But I didn't, because he owed me more than that and I was going to wait until I got it._

_"I worry about you."_

_"You do?" The words wrenched themselves out of me without my knowledge. It seemed such an impossible thing._

_"You know I have never quite recovered myself after your mother's death. I care very deeply about Daphne, but your mother was the very centre of my world. I hadn't been prepared to lose her so young. I…" This part was hard for him. I could hear the strain in his voice, beyond that of humbling himself to talk about this in the first place. His pain was still fresh after sixteen years. "I look at you now, at the young man you've become, and I feel gripped with fear for your future."_

_"Wait. Is this why you've been lecturing me about_ discretion _?" I could hardly believe it._

_"Not the only reason. I don't approve of what you're doing, but I know I can't stop it. If you are insistent on continuing in this course, then the best thing I can do is to advise that you comport yourself with more restraint in public."_

_"Father, I told you. I've not done anything."_

_"Is that the truth?"_

_I stood up, facing him down. We're nearly the same height, but I had righteous fury on my side, so I tipped my head back to look down my nose as I spoke. "Perhaps one day I can hope to be so lucky as to earn your faith in my word. Until that day, I refuse to justify myself to you. If you want to disinherit me, I really wish you would get on with it, Father. I've other matters to attend to today."_

_His brow wrinkled. "What gives you the idea that I'm disinheriting you?"_

_"Aren't you? It's what everyone in Town says. If we are to take their words for veracity, then I believe you'll be throwing me out on my ear shortly."_

_"Oh, will you stop with the dramatics," he practically bellowed. "I am not going to disinherit you!"_

_"Then why all the meetings with your solicitor and the estate manager?"_

_He rubbed at his temples. I didn't often see Father betray his emotions (especially those that hinted at his fallibility as a human being), but there was something about this tête-à-tête that seemed to have him rattled._

_"I have been trying to make provisions for the estate in the event that you attempted to dispense with it."_

_"What?"_

_"You've made your feelings on the matter of the property very clear, Basilton. I am determined that your apathy will not destroy the legacy that was handed down to you. I know you never responded to any of my letters, but I had held out the hope that you had at least read them."_

_"Your letters? I skimmed them."_ And then tossed them into the fire. __

_"If you had bothered to read them more closely, you would have seen that I was asking for your intentions with the estate. You are of age now, and your inheritance is yours to do with as you will. You gave me the impression you were aware of this fact when you threatened to remove your mother and your siblings from their home because you were unhappy with me."_

_"For fuck's sake," I muttered._

_"Language, Basilton."_

_I had to move. I had spent so much time agonising over my certain impending doom after Oxford that I had completely missed the fact that I was not, in fact, being disinherited._

_"But you hate what I am," I said, turning around to face him once I was already halfway across the room. I paced back over._

_"I disapprove of how you're choosing to conduct yourself and your private affairs."_

_"I am choosing nothing, Father, except the course of least objectionable action. I can do nothing about my feelings or my inclinations, though I know you will find that impossible to believe."_

_"You are correct in that surmise."_

_"If your disapprobation is only for my actions, then you've nothing to condemn me for. I have rebuked every opportunist and rebuffed every advance. I cannot tell you if I resisted these things for your benefit, or for the idea of my dead mother, but I stand before you as sure in the innocence of my conduct as any man has the right to claim."_

_"Then cease this foolish flirtation of yours and take the rational course for once in your life."_

_"Do you still maintain that the only course for me is marriage and family?"_

_"I do. On this point, I will not waver."_

_"Then, Father, I am afraid we find ourselves at an impasse, because I, too, will not waver. I will not inflict myself upon some unsuspecting young miss. How would you feel if you discovered your son-in-law had taken in your daughter and her whole family in a sham to cover his own arse?"_

_"Language, Basilton."_

_"Would you relegate Mordelia or either of the twins to such an existence?"_

_"Now who is being emotionally manipulative?"_

_"I am trying to explain why you are wrong in suggesting marriage as any kind of solution in the only terms I think you will understand. I want you to think long and hard about it, Father. And remember that I am your child, too, and it would be just as unfair a situation to place me in as it would your other children."_

_"You are refusing marriage then."_

_"Yes."_

_He took a very deliberate breath, visibly struggling to maintain his composure. "And the property?"_

_"The Pitches will have no use for it if they are all dead. I'll meet with your solicitor and we can discuss provisions to be made to my named heirs."_

_"And you?"_

_"I will do as you have asked and comport myself in all aspects of public life with nothing but the utmost propriety."_

_I did not tell him that I had lost all inclination to ever appear in public again, or socialise with other humans, now that I had, as I thought, finally succeeded in driving you away. Any existence but that of the ascetic monk felt far too abhorrent unless it were to include you at my side._

_"And privately?"_

_I clenched my jaw. "I will do as I bloody well please and not answer to anyone about it."_

_And with that final word, I walked out, only to find myself colliding with you yet again._

_Are we so drawn to each other that we cannot avoid these collisions? Is gravity itself conspiring to bring my downfall?_

_"Baz!"_

_How is it, Simon, that you could still look at me that way, with hope and eagerness in your eyes after everything I have put you through? How could you speak my name with something that sounded like relief and affection and surprise and excitement all rolled up tidily into one syllable and three letters? It's unfair. You still have the advantage of me. (You will always have the advantage of me, I think.)_

_"What are you doing here?"_ God damn it. _I don't know what's wrong with me. Why I can't at least try to keep up a guise of civility around you. Why I always have to twist my pain into yours._

_How many times have I opened my mouth only to watch that light in your eyes dim and your face fall in an instant?_

_"S-sorry. I—"_

_"I only meant that I thought you had gone."_

_"Oh! No, I-no. Wait, gone where?"_

_"Just gone."_

_"I took a walk into the village with Shepard to post a letter to Pen. Needed the exercise."_

_"And how is Penelope? You'll be seeing her soon, won't you?"_

_Were you thinking of that night in the folly when I held your head and asked you to tell me about her? I was._

_"I'm not sure, actually. I want to. Depends on where I'm going to go after I…leave."_

_Don't leave. Then you won't have to go anywhere._

_"Have you heard from her? How is she amusing herself without you there to read to?"_

_"Oh, uh. She's a bit excited. She thinks she's found someone who's willing to publish her under an alias. Did you know her parents are authors? They've written books together. Religion and politics, mostly. Penny's read them to me, but my mind wanders, so I'm afraid I never absorbed much. Anyway. They've got five books between them. I think Penny's trying to compete."_

_"I wish her luck."_

_"Th-thanks. I mean, not thanks, from me. Thanks for her, I suppose. Or—yeah, thanks."_

_How is it that everything you say makes me want to kiss you? Even the most mundane of sentences? Even sentences that aren't sentences. Even words that are barely words._

_"And what are you doing here?"_

_"Huh?"_

_"Lurking outside my father's study."_

_"Oh. Right. I-uh."_

_Would it have been wrong of me to reach out and stroke my fingers down that throat of yours, Simon? You did a shameful job this morning with your collar and your cravat. I wanted to put them out of their misery and undo them with my teeth and then I wanted to place my mouth onto your warm skin and tell you of all the ways you haunt me._

_"L-Lady Ruth mentioned—she said that, well, that you were in a meeting with your father. A-and I just. I just wondered. I mean, I wanted to make sure that, you know, you were all right. If the conversation went all right."_

_"You came to wait for me to make sure I was all right?"_

_And there was that blush. I do wish it didn't hide your freckles that way, but I still know where they are. I know every single one._

_"Sorry. I shouldn't have. But I know things have been tense between you, and I was just…worried."_

_"That was kind of you."_

_"It's all right, Baz. You don't need to try to be nice. I know you don't want me, and I'm not trying to bother you. I'll-I'll just go. Sorry. Again."_

_"Salisbury."_

_That look of hope in your eyes was like an arrow through my heart. (I'm already in love with you, Simon. You don't need Cupid's tricks to wound me.)_

_"I'm fine. Thank you for checking on me."_

_"Oh. Um. Yeah. Yeah. Y-you're welcome. How did it go?"_

_"Better than I had hoped." Because of you. "We reached an impasse, but we're talking, at least, and we've gotten much further than I would have thought possible for one meeting. And I don't think he's going to disinherit me."_

_"That's good! Baz, that's really good."_

_I wanted to hug you. I wanted you to hug me. I think you almost did, in your excitement for me. "It is good. I don't know if we'll ever be on better terms, but I think we've found a way to work together."_

_"I'm really happy for you."_

_Your smile could set the world on fire. It set me on fire long ago and I'm still burning._

_You're too good, Simon. Too good for this world._

_"Thank you. That means a lot to me."_

_"Yeah. Well. I should—"_

_No! I couldn't let you leave at that moment._

_"What about you?" I tried, desperately._

_"What about me?"_

_"Are you well?"_

_"Ah. No more thunderstorms."_

_"That isn't what I meant."_

_"I'm fine."_

_Why is it we only ever tell each other we're fine when we're not fine?_

_"Well. I'll g-go. Sorry, again. I wasn't out here trying to corner you or anything."_

_"I know."_

_"I'll leave it alone, Baz. I swear I will."_

_"Salisbury—"_

_"No, wait. I practised this and I'm going to say it."_

_"All right."_

_"The last few years, I've not been able to tell up from down. And mostly, I've been in a lot of down. Then, Lady Ruth shewed up, and we went to London, and I met you. And there's still a lot of down, but you're an up, Baz. You're one of the biggest ups I've ever had. That sounds weird outside of my head, but I think you know what I mean. I hope you do. And I know you don't want anything, you know, romantic, from me. I just. I hope I didn't mess things up too much the other night. I like you and I like having you in my life now. I'd like to be your friend, if you can look past the other stuff. I've never really had friends other than Penny. I'd like to have you. A-as a friend. If you'll have me."_

_"Yes, Salisbury. I'd like that."_

_How else could I respond? Certainly not by falling to my knees and clutching at your coattails and begging for you to love me. "I'd like that a lot."_

_Being friends with you will be like having everything and nothing all at once._

_"That's good! I'll write to you. Oh, um. Would you mind if I wrote to you? I should ask first."_

_"I would love it if you wrote to me."_

_I would love it even more if you wrote me love letters._

_"I'll see you at the dance later. I mean, because I'll be there and you will, too. Of course you will, it's your house and your party."_

_"Yes, later."_

_"I'll say good-bye now because it's hard in a ballroom. Good-bye, Baz. Thank you for being my friend."_

_I opened my mouth to tell you it was not good-bye, but then you were gone. And I didn't know how to bring you back to me. And I didn't know how to follow you._

_I didn't know if I could do that._

_Why is it that the thought of you and your passion gave me the courage to defend myself to my father, but the sight of you makes me feel so helpless?_

_I am helpless. Helpless against you._

_I can't believe you waited outside my father's study for who knows how long just to make sure I was all right. None of my actual friends would have done that. (None of them did.)_

_Why did you? Why is it that you're always thinking of me before yourself? Trying to put me at ease the night we met when all I'd done was sneer at you and insult you. Trying to convince me I deserved better treatment from my friends while you were in the middle of some kind of nervous episode at the opera. Trying to make me admit to being a decent person at dinner. Trying to teach me the proper way to fight and then apologising for besting me at sabres. Trying to protect me from imaginary enemy fire. Trying to comfort me when I have need of it._

_I am the greatest fool who has ever lived._

_And now I must find a way to resign myself to this dawning reality—one without you in it, because I have driven you away—one in which I am the author of my own misery._

_I suppose that were always going to be true. I have taught myself to be a veritable master in self destruction._

_The proof of this hit me with renewed force and ruthless accuracy when you reminded me that I was meant to be hosting a party this very evening, every single one of my friends down from Town to be in attendance._

_I should never have agreed to Daphne's scheme, but a mischievous part of me kept thinking of you, Simon, once more standing next to me, dressed in Dame Salisbury's latest fashion, not dancing, not talking, just existing, and torturing me with that existence._

_And what exquisite torture it has been._

_No, I take it back._ You _are exquisite, everything else pales in compare._

_You look absolutely stunning in your grey coat and tails. I don't know who chose the silk for your waistcoat, but they have matched it perfectly to your hair and eyes._

_I wish there were more life in those eyes tonight. I wish they were dancing with mirth again, the way they were when we sparred._

_I wish they would look at me._ Look at me _._

_I wish I wasn't such a bloody idiot._

_I wish you hadn't decided to be decent and honour my wishes._

_Will you honour my new wish?_

___Simon, I wish that I could have you for my own. I wish that I could be yours. ___

_Do you think it will work?_

_I haven't even managed to cross the room yet, but I have a better view of you from where I'm standing and nothing will shake me from my spot._

_You are not the only one whose notice I am trying to evade._

_I know Father has been keeping a close eye on me all evening. I know he's uneasy about the terms I set for him. I appreciate his dilemma, but it is my life and my estate and I promised I would act with discretion._

_Little does he know there is no way in which I can be indiscreet with you now._

_Little did he anticipate that you would cease looking at me at all, let alone with anything like intention._

_How do I cross this space between us?_

_Do I dare to do it when my father can see?_

_When the rest of my family can?_

_I know I must be the one. I put this space between us. I made this room impassable for you._

_So, we stand, on opposite sides of the room, though we may as well be flung to the far ends of the earth._

_I don't want to be separated from you. I want to collide with you, Simon. I want you to be my equal and opposite force. I want your momentum to pass into me and I want to move you as you have moved me._

_It is not the force, nor the momentum, but the inertia which will be my undoing._

_How do I get started when I do not have you to act upon me?_

_All along, you were pulling me and I was helpless to resist. And now you have me in your gravity and you will not release me. Let me go, Simon, or obliterate me, do not leave me in this suspension._

_How do I get started?_

_How do we get started?_

_If I cross this room, if I find my way to you, what then?_

_What freedom will we have?_

_What life will we have but one painted in shadow?_

_It has been all shadows for us both. When I look at you, though, my dear love, I see colour and vibrance and dimension. How do I keep from dimming your light with my darkness?_

_How do I—_

__What is it? Ah. You recognise this song, do you? __

_I didn't ask for it to be played, but I see now that I should have. We met at a dance, and we will part at one, and all the while we've been dancing, haven't we? When I am lonely, I will play this song and think of you. (I could have done with something less festive, but I'll make do.)_

_I see the moment it happens break across your face like dawn breaching the heavens. I hear those final notes over the din of the revellers between us and I am thrown back to that moment in the Wellbeloves' drawing room. But this time, when our eyes meet, I don't move._

_I won't move. I won't run. I won't._

_Not this time. Not ever again._

_Please, Simon, do this one more thing for us. Cross this divide one more time. Come and get me. Chase me down. Trust me. Want me. Love me._

__God in Heaven, love me. __

_It's a foolish wish. Because I am but a fool. And there are two many people between us. The moment I lose your eyes, I know it's over. We've lost the moment, and I've lost you._

_No, I drove you away._

__I _did._

_It's too much. The oppression of the crowd is almost unbearable. The heat rises to engulf me on all sides, the room a ragout of bodies. I have to get out of here._

_I have to find you._

_I fly from the ballroom, I fly from the house._

_There is nothing in there for me. That world doesn't want us and I don't want it. I want you. All I want is you, Simon._

_"Snow!"_

_Where were you heading? To the rose garden? To the folly? To the stables to fetch a horse and be done with this charade?_

_I watch you turn to meet me. You look confused. You look happy._

_"Are you leaving? Don't leave."_

_Don't leave._

_"I wasn't. I just needed air. I needed space. I needed…"_

_"I'm sorry."_

_"You're sorry? For what? You didn't do anything wrong, Baz."_

_"I've been awful. I don't have to tell you that. You know I've been awful. I-I don't know why I ran away from you. No, that's a lie. I do know why I ran away. But I shouldn't have."_

_"It's all right, Baz."_

_"No, it's not."_

_"I don't want you to feel badly about it."_

_"Well, I do. I left you there in the middle of the storm, alone, to endure the thunder and the lightning and the rain and the dark."_

_"I was the one who tried to cross a line. It was wrong of me to think that just because you'd told me about yourself, about Oxford, that you would want…that. With me. I—"_

_"It wasn't wrong."_

_"Yes, it was and I shouldn't have done it. You were just trying to be kind and I turned it—"_

_"I wasn't trying to be kind. And I didn't run because I didn't want you. Simon, I want you. I have wanted you. And I never wanted to run. I-I—"_

_I lose all conscious thought as I feel a soft, swift brush of something warm and rough against the back of my hand. There and gone._

_I look down at my hand, yours still outstretched, forefinger tentatively extended. I watch in stupefaction as you draw it once more along my skin, tracing the vein there, though the light is too dull for you to see that detail. My fingers cramp. My entire hand feels as though it's filled with needles, made of ice and set ablaze. Still, the sensation is not unpleasant. It sends a wave of heat through me, like my blood itself has decided to incinerate me at the magnitude of this one touch._

_I hear myself let out a small gasp from my already open mouth. I've been gawping like an absolute simpleton._

_Your finger stills at the sound of my intake of breath, then resumes its course more boldly, tracing an invisible path over my wrist, and up into the cuff of my sleeve. My entire body shivers at the contact; I feel as though every part of me is trying to chase you down, follow your path, find our way along together._

_"Baz," your breath is a whisper, a question, a promise, an oath, a hymn._

_I can feel myself tipping forward, and there's nothing I can do to prevent it. There's nothing I would do. You shift your hand, gripping me by the wrist, grounding me, holding me up as I fall into you. Then your hand is in my hair, and I'm not falling, you're pulling. You're pulling me into you and I let out a whimper when your mouth finds mine._

_"Baz," you breathe again, against my mouth. Into my mouth._

__Simon _I think._ Simon. _It's the only thought in my head. The only word in my vocabulary. You are the only thing I know. You are my whole world._

_Simon. Simon. Simon._

_Hot like a second heartbeat through my body. Si-mon. Si-mon. Si-mon._

_"Baz," you say again, your lips moving with mine. Softly, gently, but not tentatively. Never tentatively. Your mouth is only unsure when it speaks. It is anything but uncertain now._

_Your hands are sure, too. So sure on me, holding me fast to you. I feel your fingers brushing through my hair as you angle my head to your liking and push your chin forward and my lips fall open and then I'm being utterly devoured._

_I give in to dishevelment and abandon and do what I have been dreaming about since January: I trace my hands up over your arms and rest them upon your shoulders. It's glorious and heady and feels decadent in a way I cannot explain._

_You're still pushing against me with that chin, so I push back and I hear and feel you groan in response. It makes your mouth tremble against mine and I nip at your lips and you smile into me and then my hands are in those curls and I'm digging in for purchase as you crush me between you and the wall of the house._

_You've ruined another coat and possibly another pair of breeches._

_True martyrs to the cause._

_I'll soon be one of them._

_I think I may be dying, but I won't stop._

_I'll die kissing you. I will die kissing you. I will sacrifice myself to the slaughter._

_I don't care._

_I surrender._

_Simon, my love, I surrender._

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"Where will you go?"

__

"Dunno. Don't care." 

__

"You have to care." 

__

"Well, I don't." 

__

"What about the Army?" 

__

"What about it?" 

__

"Are you going back?" 

__

"No. My uncle's going to find someone to buy me out." 

__

"And then?" 

__

"Not sure. I've never really had a plan for myself beyond the commission. Now that's done, I suppose I'll have to come up with something new. But I don't know what that is yet." 

__

"I'd ask you to stay here, but I can't send my family away and my father would never allow this to go on under his nose. I think he's willing to pretend he doesn't know what I'm doing as long as he isn't made to think about it." 

__

"The Salisburys want me at the Abbey. Penny wants me at home." 

__

"What do you want?" 

__

"You." 

__

"You have me." 

__

"Well, then." 

__

"That's not an answer, Simon." 

__

"Say it again." 

__

"What?" 

__

"Simon." 

__

"Simon." 

__

"Why does everything sound better when you say it?" 

__

"Because you're obsessed with me." 

__

"Baz." 

__

"Is this our lot now? Doomed to an endless cycle of naming one another? It's endearing now, Simon, but I dare say the charm will wear off like the bloom of a rose." 

__

"Hush and listen. I'm trying to ask you a question." 

__

"Then hurry up and ask it already." 

__

"I will, but you keep interrupting." 

__

"Perhaps if I had some other means by which to occupy my mouth I would stay silent." 

__

"You're incorrigible." 

__

"I didn't think you knew what that word meant." 

__

"Did I say 'incorrigible'? I meant insufferable." 

__

"Go on, tell me how much you adore me." 

__

"Baz." 

__

"Yes, Simon? You wanted something?" 

__

"Where will you go?" 

__

"Ah, well, that is a thornier matter." 

__

"Then we should talk about it, yeah?" 

__

"Later." 

__

"Why later? We need to sort this out. I don't want you running away from me again." 

__

"I'm not going to run away again." 

__

"How do you expect me to believe that?" 

__

"Is my word not good enough?" 

__

"Sure it is. Until you run again." 

__

"I'm not going to run." 

__

"All right. But what if you do?" 

__

"Then you had better come and find me." 

__

"That's not an answer." 

__

"Why do you think I'm going to run now that I finally have you where I want you?" 

__

"No, I've got _you_ where I want you." 

__

"It is certainly I who have you." 

__

"That's completely wrong." 

__

"Simon." 

__

"Baz?" 

__

"Why do you think I'm going to run away from you?" 

__

"You mean, apart from all the other times?" 

__

"I never ran away from you." 

__

"All you've done is run." 

__

"No. I was running away from the situation, not from you. I was removing myself from temptation. Now that I've succumbed, what is the use in once more trying to escape it? I shall happily drown here, in the arms of my siren." 

__

"I'm not your siren." 

__

"Of course you are." 

__

"No, if anything, you're mine." 

__

"Don't be silly. You're not the hero of this tale." 

__

"I am the one who went to war abroad to make my fortune and return to discover a family I never knew I had." 

__

"Yes, but I'm much better dressed." 

__

"How do I know you're not going to run again?" 

__

"I told you. I never ran from you. I don't know how you think I ever could." 

__

"Don't you?" 

__

"No, I don't." 

__

"I'm basically worthless." 

__

"You are the only thing in this whole world that means anything, Simon. I don't give a fuck who your parents were, or what kind of title you carry, or how much money you do or don't have. I come to you as nothing more than a pathetic husk of man, entirely empty, save for what you have given me. And you have given me everything. You give so much to everyone, just don't give too much, or you'll lose yourself. And I'm selfish. I want to keep you for me. And that's why I won't run." 

__

"Because you're selfish?" 

__

"Yes." 

__

"Then where do you want to go?" 

__

"Wherever you are." 

__

"You can't just say that." 

__

"I wouldn't be happy anywhere without you." 

__

"But you can't just leave the estate, can you?" 

__

"No, but I have other properties." 

__

"You—what?" 

__

"You never answered my question. Why do you think I'm going to run away from you?" 

__

"You've seen me, Baz. You know what I'm like. It's not just some of the time. It's all the time. Any little provocation, no provocation. Fast asleep, in the middle of the night. When I'm able to sleep at all. I can't function most of the time. Nobody wants that." 

__

"I do. No, I mean. I don't want that for you, but I want to be with you, with all that. I want to be with the you I know, not someone from before. I want you messy, not neat and tidy." 

__

"Everything about you would indicate otherwise." 

__

"I may be fastidious in my fashion, but that is because it is something I can control. There is very little in my life otherwise that I am able to manage. You know that." 

__

"You did a fair job at managing to make my life sheer torture for the past three months." 

__

"Good, then you know exactly how I felt." 

__

"You truly want to burden yourself with all of my problems?" 

__

"It's not a burden, but yes, I believe that is exactly how this sort of thing works, does it not? We lighten one another's load." 

__

"That doesn't make any sense. If you give me some of your load, only to take some of mine, we'll end up with the same amount we started with, it will just be different." 

__

"No, it will be lighter." 

__

"How?" 

__

"Because we choose it. We don't choose our own burdens, but we choose each other's. I'm choosing it, Simon. I'm choosing you." 

__

"Oh." 

__

"Are you all right, love?" 

__

"I don't know." 

__

"Simon?" 

__

"N-no one's ever chosen me before." 

__

"Well, I have, so you're mine now." 

__

"Baz?" 

__

"Simon." 

__

"I choose you, too." 

__

"You have excellent taste." 

__

"Careful you don't make me regret my decision." 

__

"I have much better taste." 

__

"Is that how you pay a compliment?" 

__

"I only speak truth." 

__

"Baz?" 

__

"Simon?" 

__

"Say it again." 

__

"Simon." 

__

"No, the other one." 

__

"Love." 

__

**Author's Note:**

> I have a Simon Snow art blog on tumblr [@palimpsessed](http://palimpsessed.tumblr.com). Come say hi to me!


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